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Facial rig help

polycounter lvl 19
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Rekmar polycounter lvl 19

Hello,

I'm working on a character and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do a facial rig. I know there's plenty of material out there, but the thing is so much stuff that it's confusing.

First of all, I'm only looking at making a joint-based rig - the character would have morph targets used later, but only to make different characters (your typical character creation screen). it's a game character btw, and I'm using 3dsmax.


So first there's your typical oldschool setup (let's call it method A). all bones come out from the center (except for the eye/eyelid bones), with their pivots so far back that it will feel like the bones 'move' rather than 'rotate' - I think this came from the times when game engines only allowed bone rotations but not translations.
case example:



Then I've seen more complex rigs, most notably the one based on the Paul Neale rig (let's call it method B ), which has the bones conforming the topology. I'm not really aware of the benefits but it seemed more modern so this is then one I went for (but haven't gotten too far)
case example:


But lately I've seen more of method A. from a video from The Last of Us, Uncharted, or the one in Ryse,


My character thing is kind of a low priority project that I only retake from time to time (but eventually will gain my full attention). So far I'm just working on the modelling and doing research for the facial rig.

Thing is, I've seen this stuff around for some time, but to this day I haven't been able to understand the benefits of one or the other. Just lately I'm thinking method A is probably easier to set up.

I'd kindly ask the more knowledgeable ones to extend that knowledge :)

Replies

  • Rekmar
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    Rekmar polycounter lvl 19
    guess this needs a bump? :/
  • antweiler
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    antweiler polycounter lvl 8
    Hmm, i would say there is no benefit to do method B, and having  the restrictions of rotation only is history  I build my rigs with all bones floating (translation and rotation), like ryse and uncharted do it.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    That rig by Paul Neale looks like a control rig, with the other one being a skinned rig.
  • Mark Dygert
    Bone based, rotation only rigs always look like crap, always.
    There has been a lot of impressive rigs that really pushed what rotation only could achieve but at the end of the day they still fell short.

    Translation and rotation bone based rigs can look pretty decent, but you still run into a lot of limitations that diminish the quality and make it a pain to setup and work with.

    The more morph targets / blend shapes that get used, the better the rig becomes, the easier it is to set up and the faster it is to manipulate.

    I personally can't wait until the day comes when there are only a few bones and it's mostly morphs.
    It's simple to setup, easy to animate with and plugs in really well with a lot of facial motion capture systems. Add in normal map blending and you've reached a pretty high level of fidelity.
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