facial animation setup?

#601

I have been trying to make a setup like this in XSI however the object you have “contrained” to the m-line is giving me the most hassle.

In XSI constraining an object along a path is % based(which in most cases seems to work fine) however, it seems that in your setup you have the m-line for the top lip connected to the jaw as well as nose. So when opening/closeing the jaw the mlines get longer which in turn move the contrained object due to its % value. Are you counter animating the top lip so it doesnt pull down when opening the jaw or is there some other setup that woudl work better?

#602

When i did the very first version of the rig yes your correct, i had to counter animate to make the jaw open. Only until i started to implement a expression based aproach in combination to this setup was the rig production viable.

So in terms of the lips, each part of the lip is skinned to a point, which resides on a spline path. But this is only the first part. On top of this the spline path itself is controlled via a series of points via expressions and constraints and skinning. The mesh itself is only skinned to the top most layer i.e the contol layer.

eek

#603

great work eek.
but now id like to see more maya/XSI facial rigs.
not too bump you or anything, but you have a great method. ill be sure to try to apply it in maya, but id like to see more maya or xsi user inputs in this great thread.
:slight_smile:
ill post a wip im working on soon.

#604

This pipe definately can be ported to maya. I done some tests in maya, using the same theorys and pretty much everything works, the expressions, the splines. You have to go down the route of clusters and cv’s but the brunt of it is identical. Soft is pretty much the same pipe. Thats the nice thing about it. Theres some pipes friends of mine are working on. It be great to do a riggers meet up…

eek

#605

You know that would be really good. Maybe on line kind of thing. We can toss theories around. That always gets the creative juices going.:slight_smile:

#606

yes definately - ive been thinking of something this year. Probably mid year, when i have some holiday time. I’ll post a new thread about it soon. (and on my site)

eek

#607

I think I got the mouth m-line to work how I want however it seems like the verticle m-lines are the most difficult to get to work correctly. Do these verticle m-lines have the controler object path contrained(% based)to it. If so how did u get over the fact that that curve is stretched when the jaw is opened?

I have tried to control the % of path constaint with the object’s own global pos (which of course causes a loop and sometimes doesnt update correctly) to try and override the stretching,but I think I am goign about it all wrong.

#608

Yeah thats were I got stuck my self. I was going to try the arch lenght way. But I got slaped with a really bad cold. Damn thingk its still going. I swear you can sell me to a science, I have never seen anything this bad. Well anyways, when I regain counsciousness I will try. I was thincking in the way the strechy Ik works. I have done strechy spline before and I thinck its the same concept. Maybe?

#609

Sorry to bother you, eek, but… when do you think you will make a tutorial on how to make this facial setup? I’m getting anxious… :smiley:

  • Ian
#610

Dang this is a long thread, I went through most pages really fast and this looks cool, are you going to write a general tutorial or explanation on this system? I’d love to try this out in XSI, but I didn’t see any explanation on the rig, most of the videos aren’t working anymore =(.

desty

#611

Hi People,

Sorry for the delay, my lifes pretty busy atm trying to sort lots of things out. Work stuff etc etc. As to the rig, well im trying to fix some problems atm, also trying to setup the control system i.e the gui - which is hard to say the least. Im trying to make it as friendly as possible, really interactive and gui based - kinda of a new way of making poses which is frying my brain atm.

Al-x, hmmm. What vids dont work? Theres two clips on my reel which show off the rig and are the most up to date : www.eekstudios.com/tmp/rigging_reel.html

So more to come definately soon!

eek

#612

Hi Eek,
I’ve read thru this from start to finish tho I’m not really sure how much of it I’ve picked up. I can seriously see the advantage of this kind of setup and I’d be after figuring out a simplified version in maya. Could you spare a few moments to write down the basic methods for rigging the mouth area? I know you’ve prob done it a dozen times thru this thread in different ways but I got lost with all the expression stuff!
Is it possible to get similar results without expressions? For example I’ve got a character I’m working on that has a simple head and jaw bone that her head is skinned to. I want to create a similar kind of structure in her mouth - should I lose the bone setup and approach it with this clusters/locators constrained to a curve method? or can I keep the current jaw bone method and build on top of that?

cheers
ant
newcastle
uk

#613

Hi Ant,

So im currently in the states atm (get back on friday), coming back from discussing this whole pipe with Bay Raitt, the problems and ideas for his and my approach - so lots of ideas! And i see exactly why bay approached his setup. And the whole “preservation of volume” topic.

As for rigging this with bones yes certainly, you can setup the same mouth pipe. The area that might not work would be the mouth driving other areas.(im just not sure). Cane toad is a great example of this. And i know for sure, my pipe can work in maya, using a cluster/spline aproach.

How does your setup currently work - is it just a head bone and jaw bone with good skinning? do you have lips and cheeks etc etc being controlled? As for building on top, i think its do-able. You’d probably need some expressions coming off that jaw bone driving anything - for e.g. you could have a entirely bones driven pipe with a series of bones round the mouth, ik handles on each being driven by the jaw and then ontop of that have set driven keys make shapes.

One thing im looking into atm is mixing the idea of combination sculpting and my system. Simliar to the plumber rig which is bone and morph driven so certain bone drivers drive morph and set driven key data etc etc.

I’ll send you a pm, so we can discuss more.

eek

#614

Hey Eek! I told you that Rigging inside an airplane would be a timesaver. Remember? Heh heh. :smiley: I suppose you’ll be coming back with a lot of cool ideas soon my friend.

anthonymcgrath: You may want to check out Chris Harvey’s Facial Bone Rig. It’s a pretty cool setup. Here you go; http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=170634

:slight_smile:

#615

Doing a combination facial rig is in my opinion the best approach. And is where my facial rigs have been going for the last 3 years or so (maybe 4 , can’t remember now). Anyway the thread that Tughan posted was from a facial rig that was a very early test on this system…bones driving morphs. That particulr rig only emplyed the bones side of thing to see how far it could be pushed before morphs were inlcuded. But the bottom line is that I firmly believe for extremely detailed (we’re talking film and creature/digital double stuff) facial systems a hybrid approach is the best. Ultimately it will give you the most control and you can take the best from both methods.

Eek, you must have had fun with Bait…I’m jealous…hehe.

#616

Harvey,

Your exactly right, combination systems are the key i think. I may be using splines but i got all the aproaches and ideas of other systems, pose blending, points acting as bones, expressions. Also its good to look outside the box, theres some research out there which is scary.

Tughan, Harvey,

Bay gave me a lot of ideas, i understand the whole reason he built his setup they way he did. He came up with an interesting problem, if forget what it was called, "zygo- " something that hes aproached solved and im working on(but its :eek: hard!). i.e “convergence” when 3 shapes poses/muscles/groups come together: which takes president, there order, the ratio of each pose i.e 33%,33%,33% or 20%,40%, 40%, etc etc its an interesting idea. As you dont want the face to break or fracture if you will. It’s interesting -we attacking the same problems but from different directions. It was cool!

eek

#617

Man, you should’ve record these conversations to a DVD video or something.:slight_smile: I know that video would sell. :smiley:

#618

Q:

Those neat little manipulators in your rigging reel, eek – Where did you get those? Did you make them or is it a plugin for max? It’d be SO helfpul to have some of those…

#619

hey eek…l

at the begining of this thread you where talkin’ about some kinda tutorial you are going to post… where is it man… i need it really.

#620

Ok,

Tughan, Theta,omarhib,

I dont want to go of topic. So this is a quick answer: dvd is coming. And those gui control were custom built, im working on some slicker ones now.

eek