Facial Rigging - Good Resources?
polycounter lvl 6
Hi Guys,
I was hoping to start a useful thread about face rigging. I decided to start learning a bit about it, because I've never done anything advanced with facial rigs and want to learn. I've been googling a lot to try to find out some useful information. Usually with new techniques like this, I quickly hit what seems to be the go to resource for this kind of thing, but I'm finding it more difficult with this subject. A lot of people recommend a couple of books on Amazon that were published in 2003, including the Polycount Wiki. Can this really be the best resource on the subject?? 15 years in computer graphics is massive right?
Are there any facial riggers here that can help me out? I really want to understand the basic fundamentals, when to use joints and blendshapes now that engines support blendshapes, best practices of control panels vs face controls, etc.
This link was pretty interesting though it's very short and didn't take me too far: https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/how-to-rig-a-face-for-animation
I know it's a difficult thing because the obvious answer will be the rig depends on the needs of the game / animation, but there must be things that will be essential to learn and somewhat generic to a human face.
I have been thinking of using joints in the right places across the face and then creating faux-blendshapes using "poses" created with the joints and set driven key in Maya.
Any useful links, videos, books, tutorials, or helpful comments would mean the world! Thanks for reading.
I was hoping to start a useful thread about face rigging. I decided to start learning a bit about it, because I've never done anything advanced with facial rigs and want to learn. I've been googling a lot to try to find out some useful information. Usually with new techniques like this, I quickly hit what seems to be the go to resource for this kind of thing, but I'm finding it more difficult with this subject. A lot of people recommend a couple of books on Amazon that were published in 2003, including the Polycount Wiki. Can this really be the best resource on the subject?? 15 years in computer graphics is massive right?
Are there any facial riggers here that can help me out? I really want to understand the basic fundamentals, when to use joints and blendshapes now that engines support blendshapes, best practices of control panels vs face controls, etc.
This link was pretty interesting though it's very short and didn't take me too far: https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/how-to-rig-a-face-for-animation
I know it's a difficult thing because the obvious answer will be the rig depends on the needs of the game / animation, but there must be things that will be essential to learn and somewhat generic to a human face.
I have been thinking of using joints in the right places across the face and then creating faux-blendshapes using "poses" created with the joints and set driven key in Maya.
Any useful links, videos, books, tutorials, or helpful comments would mean the world! Thanks for reading.
Replies
Also have you tried searching the GDC archives?
edit:
I mean the Paul Ekman one from the 70's/80's or whatever it was.
https://www.paulekman.com/product-category/facs/
do a search for the uncharded presentation of drake...
But even with this "mostly joints" type of rig he still makes use of corrective blendshapes. Taken from the course description:
Week Eight: Creating corrective blend-shapes and final testing
Week eight will be our final week and will be used to add that final level of finesse to our rigs. We'll use corrective blend-shapes to handle areas that are trickier to get right with joints. We'll then also talk about testing your rig properly before handing it off to animators and some of the different phases in production for rig hand offs.
About FACS:
- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/face/www/facs.htm (older version of FACS, but it's still good to get the muscle names since they're the same)
- http://web.archive.org/web/20140226183636/http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/expression/muscles.jsp (click a face muscle to be taken to a description of what it does)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location#Axes (about anatomical locations: lateral vs medial, anterior vs posterior, proximal etc.)
This is an example from 'Ryse: Son of Rome' - 260 joints @ 8 influences + 230 corrective blendshapes were used.
Don't suppose anyone has an information on using it inside of max though? Free virtual hugs for help
http://paulneale.com/tutorials/facial-rigging-method-which-is-best-for-you-and-your-production/?fbclid=IwAR3Tu6gkWgl13wzQbNNovR0KjLi6K0N0bPu2-86tVlKIJkUwDd6VyfJR5tk
https://80.lv/articles/project-ryan-by-agora-image/
1) The Art Of Moving Points by Brian Tindall
2) Anatomy Of Facial Expression by Uldis Zarins
Making a face rig isn't about kinda fancy techs, but understanding the anatomy. If you don't know it, tech won't help.