Sensible rigging tips

[Remi]

Personally, I use a blend to control the facial stuff. It eliminates any issues that may arrise when moving the character through space. I guess I would recommend rigging the body up, and keeping the facial rig seperate. Does that help at all?

[Aikiman]

Personally, I use a blend to control the facial stuff. It eliminates any issues that may arrise when moving the character through space. I guess I would recommend rigging the body up, and keeping the facial rig seperate. Does that help at all?

Blend shapes sound like a go, Ill take a look at that then also, thanks.

[Aikiman]

If one does blend shape the face, does this not mean the head will have to be separate from the body? If so how do you hide the seams when it comes to animating the body and creating facial expressions at the same time? confused.

[Remi]

Select the head faces, extract, duplicate it, move it somewhere, select the original head geo, Shift select the body and combine, then merge the points, now the head point order is unchanged and you can create blends to your hearts desire.

[Aikiman]

Select the head faces, extract, duplicate it, move it somewhere, select the original head geo, Shift select the body and combine, then merge the points, now the head point order is unchanged and you can create blends to your hearts desire.

great ill give it a go. thanks

[Remi]

Hey no problem Aikman. Also, for a joint setup, I would do it the same way, I would extract the faces of the head, duplicate, move, then make that a blend for the original, rig up the face, and keep the blend at 1 on the orig. Then you can use cntrls on the face, or you could make a quick little "osipa" gui or whatever you want really. Not sure if you're wanting to rig up the face, but if you do want to give it a go, here's a good place to start.

http://www.dirtyoldtoon.com/tutorials/LipTutorial_01.htm

[Aikiman]

That sounds an even better idea Remi, I like how you can have the facial rig connected to the main body using the blendShape node! This is going to take me a few weeks to achieve because of other time constraints but Im looking forward to it even more now. /thumbsup

Once I start Ill post my progress and of course any other issues that pop up, appreciate your advice. IF I have time I might even do a version with Maya muscle.

BTW Ive heard that the FBIK is pretty buggy and hard to set up is this the case for you too? I want to do some fairly dynamic body movements and FBIK would help out a lot. Just looking for a heads up so I know what Im getting myself into.

[Remi]

I haven't messed with FBIK really, I can't give you any sort of advice there. There's been a couple of threads that I think discussed it over pretty well though, try a search and see if they pop up. Another cool thing about the above setup, is that you can have corrective blends if you need them as well. You would just apply those to your first "Blend" head. If you wanted to go down that road as well.

[kelgy]

Does this setup still work if you use zbrush to make the blendshapes?

Usually i just have the face blendshapes on the body and hide the blendshapes in a layer. I havent had any slowness problems. Why else would you want to separate the head from the body? Curious to know.

[Remi]

I like to seperate mine just so the facial rig isn't moving in world space. It avoids any issues that may occur when doing that, not saying that issues DO happen, but I don't want to give it the opportunity. You don't HAVE to do it that way. I would think the blends made in Zbrush would work just fine with that setup. It's not really different from a typical setup. You don't have to seperate the head from the body I guess, but if you're not doing any blends on the body, why do you need it there? It takes about 5 - 10 seconds to seperate them.

[kelgy]

I tried separating and recombining once and got weird jitters in the whole mesh when using a blendshape.
Not sure what i did wrong.

[Remi]

Without actually knowing, my guess would be either you added geometry, or you had a setting wrong when creating the initial blendshape. I could be wrong there, but that would be the most common reasons. Now if you're using Z to create the blends that might do something as well, i'm not familiar with that workflow actually so I wouldn't have much info there. Sorry.

[Aikiman]

Its seems logical to separate the head and do your animation on the side for the facials. that way you can set up a camera solely for the blendshape and when it comes time to do facials, you change cameras and animate away instead of having to zoom in all the time at different angles. Also as mentioned by Remi your body rig isnt cluttered with your head rig, personal choice I guess.

BTW I just attached FBIK to my rig and it is bloody awesome. I haven't done any weighting yet but I just wanted to see if I could hook it up - no probs. Once I fix up my weighting Ill do a small animation and post it.

[Aikiman]

Remi, just working on the order of things here, Im a bit stuck and I dont want to proceed otherwise I may stuff up my rig, question is...Ive separated my head from the body and duplicated it getting ready for blendshape. Should I rig and skin the duplicate first before applying the blendshape? Also afterwards I should attach the head back onto the body then smooth skin the body to the body rig? These questions are probably really obvious to an old hand but not so for a newbie :)

EDIT Its all good I answered my own questions, this method does indeed work (on a low res model)

[Aikiman]

Ive noticed while merging vertices and doing other little bits and pieces my inputs on the mesh node are building up a horrible little history. Obviously I cant delete history otherwise I lose my blendshape and turning history off doesnt work. Is there any way to avoid creating history this way?

[Remi]

Can you delete "Non-deformer" history and see if that works? Not sure if it will get rid of everything, but it will get rid of stuff you don't need. Let me know if that works for you. Sorry I missed your other question but it looks like you got it answered by yourself:)

[Aikiman]

Can you delete "Non-deformer" history and see if that works? Not sure if it will get rid of everything, but it will get rid of stuff you don't need. Let me know if that works for you. Sorry I missed your other question but it looks like you got it answered by yourself:)

Na it didnt, I got this error...

// Error: line 0: The -prePostDeformers flag is not supported with the following node(s) in the history: polyUnite1 polySeparate1 //

But Im not going to bother with head animation just yet Ive decided since it is another kettle of fish ATM. Im gunna do a walk cycle with both standard IK and then with FBIK to see which setup is easiest and most effective then do a few other dynamic tests with a bit of nCloth thrown in. After that Ill focus on face rig.

[Remi]

I like to attach the geo back to the body and delete the history prior to making the blends, that should rid you of those.

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