3D Facial Animation - Max

Showster

Hi guys I am very new to the idea of face animation, infact the only way I currently know to do this is key vertices in 3dmax over time.

I've heard about morphing,sliders and expression controls but I've not really had much luck finding out how or where I can find out about them.

I really need to use these for a current project, using both high and low polygon mesh.

I currently have access to 3D Studio max 5/7 and would prefer a free plugin method or none plugin method based approach.

I have tried the search function but not really found anything applicable.

Thanks for your time and interest

Rick Stirling

I use bones rather than morph targets, but both work well - it depends on what your game engine supports.

I usually set up 2 bones per eyebrow, one on each upper eyelid, one on each lower eyelid, one on each cheek, and 6-9 around the mouth. Of course, there is a jaw bone too.

I don't use sliders, I manually rotate the bones, but you PROBABLY could create a slider for each bone and use the wire parameters dialogue to link the bone rotation to a slider.

JonMurphy

I'm sure there is a tutorial in MAX for using morphs for facial animation...

I'm with Rick on the bones front... here's a quick grab of my current rig



I admit to using a few more bones , but this rig gives me as much expression as I could get with a morph.

I also use a great little script called anipose. I set up file with all the facial expressions, nab the bones poses into the script, then I have this little toolbox floating where I can use a slider to bring in each expression as I want it.

http://www.chuggnut.com/scripts/anipose/anipose.htm

I also recommend 'Stop Staring' by Jason Osipa. It is Maya centric, but a fantastic book for getting going with facial animation, all the same.

Showster

thanks for the information guys looks like its gonna eat my brains again

Wrath

I'd reccomend morph targets...probably easier to wrap your head around for a newbie. Whether you use a set of morph targets, or a skeletal rig, you'll be doing basically the same thing...keyframing a series of poses or mouth shapes for phonemes.

Setting up sliders is just a more convenient way to keyframe the morph targets (or bones), so you can skip that until you get a grasp on the basics. Expressions...I'm not sure how you'd use them for facial animation, but it'd undoubtedly be way over your head for now. Just keep it simple.

Eric Chadwick

I agree with Wrath, bones open up a whole can of worms. For one, the weighting is a pain in the ass. I would definitely recommend against it for someone new to lipsync. Morphs are quick to set up and play with. Once you get that working then I'd say it's a good idea to learn the bones approach. Maybe start with a combo... morphs plus a bone for the jaw, then graduate to a bones-only solution.

Unless you guys think bones are easier?

Keith Lango has a great article about lipsync.
http://www.keithlango.com/lipSync.html

Michael Comet too.
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/lipsync/lipsync.html

Gary Martin's extended Preston Blair phoneme series.
http://www.garycmartin.com/phoneme_examples.html
Lots of links at the bottom.