[3dsmax] Animating facial expression with texture

binopittan

Hi.

I'm always courius on how to animate facial expression on character facial expreesion by texture.

Something like this i guess
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6H72zEA5o"]Hatsune Miku Project Mirai: Clover Club - YouTube[/ame]

Can someone tell me how to do it? i was thinking it probably by animating UV

thx

Ace-Angel

Floating planes, decals, animated UV's, flipbook, etc, there are countless ways which all depend on the engine and what are the option available to achieve said effect.

binopittan

No engine. it's for TV series works that will be rendered on 3dsmax. So no in game limitation actually..

I'm not sure what do you mean by floating plane and decal.
What i'm asking it's not where to slap the texture..

What i want is a complete facial rig, something like this
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3LFZJjfRI8"]Durian Project: Sintel's Face Rig - YouTube[/ame]
except the eyes and mouth are texture. no messing around with the mesh.
the image sequences for animation are prepared beforehand.

So let just say i put some kind of controller on tips of a character lips ( which only a texture )
When i drag upward that controller. it will calls "smile" animation that prepared beforehand. No messing around wiht the mesh, so it's not like pulling the controller will also pull the vertex up so it will give the impression of smiling.

I hope that understandable. Has anyone here at PC working on soething like this,
I actually understand on how animated UV works but if i'm correct that almost give no control at all,

Eric Chadwick

You could do this in Max. If for rendering only, I would use a Composite map, with each pose on a layer with its own Mask. You could use different UV channels, one for each face region (eye L, eye R, mouth, etc.). To make a nice GUI, you could use Wire Parameters to connect viewport Manipulator gizmos to the masks in the Composite map, to pop on and off the poses.

It's going to take some setup, just like any nice character rig, but it's certainly do-able.

Bellsey

you can also do all that inside Softimage Face Robot. It's easy to setup and will auto create the rig for you. It also has a good game export process to bones that will animate normal maps to add detail. You can also point cache animation out as well.

binopittan

Thanks for the inout guys! a co worker of mine actually familiar with wire parameter method. Will check on that later.

alfreditog

Hi
I have the same problem but I don´t know how to animate 2d textures on composite maps, did you got a solution with wire parameters? can you share it?
Thanks.

alfreditog

Did you find a solution for this? I´m interested on that issue too

sekushinonyanko

Is there any way to do this with Maya?