Would this mesh be suitable for face rigging?

#1

Hi I’m currently creating a character for a piece of university work which I am going to learn to rig the body for (never rigged anything before) and I am also thinking about the idea of adding some simple rig animations to the face also. However, I know that the state of the mesh will be an important factor in being able to achieve this and so I was hoping that you could tell me whether you think the model of the head (picture attached) will be suitable at all for this so far, or whether or not the mesh would need correcting as I know its far from perfect and also isn’t symmetrical.
Thanks.

#2

Hi
Poly count too high.
Rgds,

#3

I’d definately say it’s too high poly. Also you want to have a look at the edge flow of the geo - you’re going to spend most of your time with that mesh fighting the topology. Think about how the forms of your own face moved around when you smile or snarl. Even better have a look in the mirror and watch. You want to have the flow of the edges laid out in such a way that you can pull the edges to create those creases.

Jason Osipa’s stop staring book was a great help for me regarding this when I was starting out. There’s also lots of good posts related to modeling topology here on the forums. Polycount is also pretty good too.

#4

Thankyou both for your help and advice, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be very suitable. I’ve already spent a lot of time mapping the UVW on now so it looks like I’ll have to do that again if I decide to amend the topology. Maybe I’ll just have to have a fairly emotionless looking face in my animation if i can’t find a fairly quick way of fixing the mesh. Thanks again.

#5

If you are using 3DS Max you can always use the Skin Wrap modifier to bind your high poly mesh to an optimized low poly mesh, that you control via a facial rig.

#6

I would check out the facial topology wiki over at polycount. There are some very nice examples of facial topology.

polycount facial topology wiki

also This thread, also on polycount has a lot of useful information, regarding topology and general face rigging info.

#7

Thanks again for all your comments, I had a go at using the conform tools last night within max and greatly improved the topology but from having just looked at the links you sent I think I can improve it even more now especially before I decide to go anywhere near the rigging. I’ll upload another shot of the mesh once I’ve had another go at correcting it. Thanks for your help.

#8

Hello again, thanks again for your help in fixing my mesh. Here is my new mesh that I am hoping will be a lot more suitable for face rigging now, although I’m sure there will be areas that need tweaking. I suppose I will soon find out when I finally get round to it! Just a quick question… when I convert the head to an editable poly or collapse the stack, it keeps doubling the amount of polygons in the mesh. Does anyone know how to convert it in its current state and not increase the polys?

#9

Hey dougy71089.

that looks a lot better in terms of topology around the mouth. I guess you can take out some additional edge loops (especially in the mouth and chin area) which will speed up rigging and skinning later on.

The ears are still a bit much in terms of polygon density I guess.

Cheers

Chris

#10

Hello again, I have now completed the head of my character and just need to texture the baseball cap. I am now close to beginning to add the face rig and I just wanted to know how I should go about it before I start. Is the best method to use morphers for the facial animations or bones? Or both? Sorry if its a silly question, I just want to make sure I’m going about it the right way before I commit to anything. Thanks

#11

Unfortunately, asking ‘which way is better bones or morphs’ is a bit like asking ‘how long is a piece of string’! It all depends what you are wanting to do with it.

If you’re new to rigging then I would be tempted to suggest you do it via morphs as generating those will use more of your modelling skills.

If you’re familiar with using joints and skinning then you could get some nice results using a mainly joint based system, with some corrective blends over the top.

However it really boils down to if you want this to be used in a pre-render or a realtime style application.

#12

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