Updated tutorial on facial rigging for lip sync animation (3ds Max)

#1

Hi,

I finally found time to continue the tutorial on facial rigging for lip sync animation in 3ds Max on my blog.

You can find the first part (mostly an overview) here:

Tutorial - Facial Animation and Lip Syncing 01
And the second part here:

Tutorial - Facial Animation and Lip Syncing 02

Since I´m not really an expert on the matter, don´t expect a fool proof step by step explanation of the process, I merely wanted to share some expiriences I gathered by following other tutorials and experimenting with my own workflow.

If you find it helpful, but have unanswered questions, feel free to comment here or directly on my blog.
Feedback also welcome of course…:wink:

#2

there’s a way to fix the problem you had when doing asymetrycal shapes ( like L-smile and R-smile ) so when they add up they work as intended in the final shape. Model the whole smile, then in a neutral face, add the smile as a morph, but using only a vertex selection of 1 half of the head, ( use soft selection to have a nice fallof.) now make a snapshot of this half smile. now back on the neutral head with morpher applied, close the subobject so the morpher affects the whole thing, add another channel in the morpher with the half smile in it, and set that channel to -100 , so it subtracts the half smile to the original smile and that leaves you with the other side of the smile, so now you just need to make a snapshot of that and you have both left and right shapes, when they add together they give you the exact whole shape. Hope that makes sense…

also for the problem here:
“2. Create corrective morph targets for the problematic combinations. I haven´t actually tried this solution because I already had to do some corrective morph targets for the jaw positions and they are a real pain in the ass to create: Basically you just clone the base mesh, pick the clone as a morph target, set the jaw bone in the position where the problems occur (p.E.: teeth poking through the cheek when opening the jaw), set the morpher modifier to “automatically reload targets” and then work on the cloned mesh until the problems disappear. But since you´re not working on a cloned mesh of the problematic position, but you´re working on a clone of the mesh in an idle position, it´s really hard to see wich vertices to manually push around and where to push them to…So if anybody knows a better workflow to deal with those problems, I would be gald to hear them…;)”

you should use skinMorph for that, it is really easy to use and quite straight forward with simple stuff, have a look if you’ve never used it.
If what you want to do are correctives for morph to morph combinations, just set those 2 morph active int he morpher, duplicate that mesh, add an edit poly on that mesh, and tweak the vertices using that edit poly,once you are done with it, copy and paste that edit poly modifier on a neutral face, and there you have ur corrective… Hope that makes sense again…

#3

Thanx for the feedback, metamesh!

For the first answer to my questions:
I´m not quite sure I get how your solution would help me with my problem.
My problem isn´t a way to create asymetrical morph targets, but that the soft selection isn´t working for me in the morpher modifier - it´s just completely ignored, even if I tick “use vertex selection” in the global paramters rollout.

I attached two Pictures to demonstrate the problem. For this I set the morpher modifier to automatically reload the morph targets, so I could see the changes in real time…:

This one is without soft selection (you can see the vertices in the middle not being affected)
http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=169354&stc=1

And this one is using soft selection ( I expanded the soft selection way beyond necessary to demonstrate the effect it doesn´t have…;):

http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=169355&stc=1

I´m not sure, but If I used skin morph or just set the corrective shapes up using reactor.
But the second part of your answer is a really good tip, this way it is way easier to work on corrective shapes!

#4

hey Samuel, no pb.

for the soft selection, you don’t have to use the “use vertex selection” option. Just go under your morpher in the stack, go to vertex subobject, and select the vertices you want, and also set the soft selection on, so it passes the selection in the stack to the next modifier ( morpher in this case) so the morpher will use only the vertices selected UNDER the stack…

#5

Ah, I see, I think now I got it! Thanks; I´ll update the blogpost asap…:wink:

I still think its stupid that soft selection doesn´t work like I tried to use it when ticking “Use vertex selection”…

#6

yeah is kind of silly but again, u can do it using the selection stack instead of the " use vertex selection" the result is the same but allows u to have soft selection :slight_smile:

#7

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