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View Full Version : Facial Rigging: How to get controls to move with blend shapes

MonkeyTennis
02-13-2010, 11:14 AM
Hi guys,

Do any of you know how to get a control object (nurbs curve) to move with a blend shape as it is being used? I am creating extra controls for the face (joints skinned to the mesh).

The only idea I have is a rivet script from highend3d, which creates a locator that is constrained to a point on the mesh you select. However, if I then parent or constrain the control to the rivet, I will get a cycle error (the control object (nurbs curve) controls where the rivot goes and the rivot controls where the control obj goes). So It all goes massively wrong.

Does anyone know of any other method I could use? I could use expressions, but thats incredibly long ( i have 40 joints ) and I dont think it would be optimal.

Thanks.
isoparmB
02-14-2010, 09:12 AM
Usually it will involve you using two meshes. The first will be your skinned and blendshaped mesh, and the second will be the deform mesh, or the one that gets rendered out.

The second mesh will be permanently blendshaped to the first, and then deformed to wire curves. You then use the first mesh as a guide geometry that your control curves will ride on. you can have rivet locators to follow the first mesh and skin a wire curve to joints constrained to these (in this method the wire and the base both have to follow the first mesh, the controllers are meant to offset the curves to perform the deformation on the second mesh). You then hide the first mesh as you will only need to see the deform mesh.

This is the principle, but there are lots of variants to this. Some people use folicles instead of rivets, or other deformers instead of wire curves.
MonkeyTennis
02-14-2010, 03:57 PM
Thanks a lot for your help, i'll try it out!

Gavin
verbatimline
02-14-2010, 09:48 PM
Have you tried using follicle nodes? You could use them on the deformed face. parent a locator or control obj under it and connect the contrl's translation to clusters applied to a blendshape target.
derik
02-15-2010, 05:30 AM
Check out Mr Erick Miller and friend's Hyper Real series , I believe the 'hyperRealMeshParent.mel' is exactly what you want. Easy to use , and great results.

Cheers
MonkeyTennis
02-15-2010, 08:17 AM
O mate thanks a lot, it looks like its exactly what i need, I will get back to you guys with the results! Wow this forum is helpful!

Thanks,
Gavin
MonkeyTennis
02-15-2010, 12:32 PM
Yes it worked! Thanks so much.

For anyone else wanting the answer, just use the hyperRealMeshParent.mel tool by Erick Miller. Its basically like the rivot script you find on creative crash but sooooo much better, it will work on joints, clusters and other deformers.

Here is a website that you can use as a tutorial and where you can download the script:

http://terencejacobson.com/

Its at the bottom of the page (week 8).

Thanks a lot for your help!
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