hey 3DZ, what happened to that facial rigging

[Equinoxx]

it's been put on temp. hold due to work on magicM's side
that's one thing i know . . .

[tonygib]

ahh, ok thanks Equinoxx, with luck time will allow for a revival sometime, assuming that maxscript can in fact do it anyway.

[LFShade]

magicm's too busy as well, but his script stuff sounded promising. He indicated that a general mechanism for hooking up controllers to his Flash joystick was under decent progress; I can't wait to see what he's cooked up! Meanwhile, I'm still doing little private tests of the technique (minus the fancy UI) to see how best to achieve smooth, cohesive blending between multiple interacting target shapes. I have a new appreciation for Simon Mills' work, this stuff takes a lot of time and patience!

RH

[JeT]

I like to use effectors that affect each other using Orientation Constraints, these effectors are linked controllers that I rotate around a singular point. The use of rotation vs move ensures nice round facial animation.

[tonygib]

LFShade: yes it will be interesting to see what he has cooked up and yeah simon's reel was impressive, tho I wonder how much of that UI setup was just general features of XSI and how much did he have to "make" himself. As I don't know XSI, its hard to tell. Taking nothing away from Simon, but sometimes, something that looks very impressive (and is), turns out to be easy to do in one software package or another.

JeT: That sounds interesting, any chance of a few sample screen shots or a very basic little max file that shows the setup? Are you doing this using the morpher?

[JeT]

sure mate i'll just set up a default head and post max file. i'll just have the mouth rigged to show what i mean.

[JeT]

There you go! its a bit messy, but its fast and simple and good for individual expression. the problem with 3d these days is that people just dont put enough data into their animation; everyone relies on the keyframes and lets the computer do the tweening. the animation in this file is no exception (good thing too because its pretty crap) but im just making a point. And hey dont steal my head!

I'll work on the rest of the rig later, right now its just the mouth to show you what im talking about.

edit: Link Removed ( theres no evil laughing emicon ) >:D

tell me what you think.

[JeT]

oh and no im not using any morphers, as you'll see in the max file, im using a control rig affecting the mesh with skin modifiers, because too many xform modifiers are evil to setup.

[peekoot]

check this one out... it just might be even better than simon mills... but looks like similar principle though...

http://www.antropus.com/forum/plumb_rig001.avi

http://www.antropus.com/english/home1.htm

this is done in maya but please tell me that something like this is preparing for max... :) i recon it's not too complicated... and i'm sure it's possible...

this one is pretty cool... but i would like some function that memorizes certain expressions...

[peekoot]

and jet... yeah.. i was using something similar.... but it turned out that it was pain if you need lipsync animation.... i prefer mtargets... less things to keyframe... i now use this method only if i have complicated head that needs lot of mtargets.. i set bone system (bit different than yours)>rough out expression with bones>snapshot>turn to poly>fine tune it a bit.. and get some pretty nice results...

one idea also would be to use helpers on a path and slider wich controls %... that would be some hybrid that has some potential... unfortunately... without max script scene gets pretty heavy... bad implementation of sliders i guess..

[JeT]

hey peekoot, hey wow this is quite nice! it sure does crap all over my 2 minute setup huh! but it is good for inspiration, thats for sure. I wonder how to max this out.

yeah sliders and path constraints are a real pain, very very heavy on the poor computer, and speed of use (and preferably assemblage) is what needs to be achieved. Still. I wonder how to apply this setup. (in a nice simple logical way, i mean come on, theres always a nice simple logical way!)

cheers for the preview peekoot.

[tonygib]

hey guys, I'll grab that video and have a look when I get the chance.

I do remember someone doing a face rig using some helpers on a spline. It seamed to work, but not really a single nice multi-directional control like Simons and yeah, once you add all the ones you need it did get a little messy.

However I was just thinking that maybe with a postion reactor controller, since that will track movement in a full 3D plane, if something like that was liked into a morpher, then that may work. Will have to find some time nd have a little play.

JeT: Unfortunately I'm not online every day, and missed your link. Could you repost or PM me, thanks.

[JeT]

Tonygib: I emailed your hotmail account.
Yeah I'm playing with splines now. have to see how that goes but.

[tonygib]

Thanks JeT, got that and will check it out. I also had a look at that maya plumb video, yeah thats pretty neat. I tried a quick little play using the reactor controller and morpher channels and I think you can basically do much the same thing as that in max.

I guess the real differance was that Simons was done as an interface UI, which was what I was looking for in max. But I suppose one could put a bunch of animation control splines in front of the model in a viewport and do it that way. Will have to play around more and see what is doable and what makes animation easier.

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