Polygon based beard rigging for Unreal 4

Batou

Hi everyone, I've been trying my hand at character modeling as I'm the only modeler in a small indie team at the moment and we need some unique characters. Managed to research most subjects but when it comes to rigging facial hair to move realistically with face deformations and well, it's been difficult. I'm using Blender 2.8 but don't let that dissuade you from posting advice from whatever software you use as I might be able to find a similar solution. 

This is the default pose and how I expect it to look.



Using the weight transfer tools and data transfer modifier the results were very poor so now I'm using two data transfer modifiers and things have improved though is still nowhere near what I wanted, I'd like the tip of the hair to no to be deformed ideally only the root should move with the skin.

This is the result of the data transfer modifier but I think I'm not going in the right direction with it because the hair is stretched.



Thanks in advance any help is greatly appreciated

Lord McMutton

It might just come down to elbow grease- I recommend using the data transfer as a base and then doing manual adjustments to make it look the way it should.

My favorite way of doing that kind of thing is getting a weight paint brush with very low Strength and Weight values, put it on Add mode, and then just go at the problem areas until the shapes are correct. (Works best when you leave it in an extreme position, like your second image)

Perhaps adding more planes could also be useful so that there's a more even distribution.

Batou

Thanks pal . Was hoping to avoid that pain, guess I'm not going to have many bearded characters in the game .