Using 2d animation for facial expressions and lip synching of 3d characters ?

melviso

I wanted to ask how this is done.I am guessing u animate the facial movements and lip movements on the flattened uv textures or is there another way to approach this?How are the image textures applied in Maya and Blender and gotten to match the 3d model movements.

Wanted to try this style out for an animation.I noticed square enix used this in their ps2 games.I intend to use high res textures and more 2d animation details.

Thanks.

melviso

Have thou any opinions or suggestions about this workflow?

melviso

Example of what I am trying to achieve:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHkq6kNKH4"]Let's Play My Sims Agents Part 2 - YouTube[/ame]

I am wondering how I can switch animated sequences for the faces like if I animate the eyes blinking,and animate a wink.How do I place the blink and the wink or do I need to make everything a full image sequence in an external animation app before applying it to the material?

rube

An easy way is to have all your facial expressions evenly spaced on a sprite sheet and then map the parts to different planes floating above the characters face. Then you can offset the UVs of the planes to make the expressions change. If you control the offset by a null you can then use that null in a shader in engine to reproduce the animation in game.

melviso

Thanks,rube.Its actually for an animation and not a game.

I think this best explains what I am trying out.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMmaFFWtQw4"]Tomb Raider Chronicles Cutscenes Part 2 - YouTube[/ame]

They are the ingame cutscenes from Tombraider chronicles(ahhh..the memories).As u can see the the facial expressions and lipsynching were 2d animated then assigned to the material.Though the textures are pixelated and very low res.The story the cutscenes are trying to tell are still believable.Any suggestions on how this was done?I wonder if any of the devs who worked on this game still hangs out here.It would be cool to know how things were done back in those days.

rube

The method I mentioned will work fine rendered as well.

Mrfred

how to build a controller for rube's method

http://www.monotoneminimal.com/archives/506

Richard Kain

If you want to optimize your UV space, you should separate the area where your mouth texture will be rendered and use a different material for it. Assign it a material that takes two different textures, one for the general background, and one for the animated texture. By adjusting and animating the UV coordinates for the second texture you can sprite-sheet the drawing of the mouth, and animate it separately from the rest of the model.

melviso

@rube thanks a lot for the suggestion.Will try it out.

@Mrfred Very useful info,even though I am using Blender currently.Will look into how I can apply this.Thanks.

@Richard Kain Thanks bro.Currently researching what u just pointed out.Will post something soon.

melviso

I know this question is asked a lot but I was checking out the low poly sticky thread and I noticed a lot of the works there are modeled with tris rather than quads.

A lot of modelers say quads are better especially for a clean look and baking.Tris can be used for non deformation areas or for the underside of knees and elbows?

Are quads really important?I remember reading somewhere that why should it,the consumer or viewer never get to see those wireframes.I think modeling in quads is the best way but sometimes I ponder if creating entire face loops just to put details in a small area isn't wastage.

melviso

Trying this out on a model.I will start animating the face in a 2d animation app and plug in the animation as an image sequence.Surprisingly,u can layer textures on top of each other in one material in Blender,like image sequence for the eyes on one layer and so on.


Using the frensel glsl shader with color management turned on.