[3DS MAX] Moving Facial Rig Controls with Head

JordyJS · Apr 2018

So in 3DS Max I've got my face rig all linked to my controls in the reaction manager and it works fine when it's stationary, however, I'd like for these controls to move with the head rather than stay in the same place. I tried parenting them, but because the reactions are based on the slider's world space position, when I move the head, it moves the slaves driving the reactions as well, causing undesirable animation. In short, I basically can't move the controls at all without reaction manager thinking the sliders moved.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/xl/ijar0mlnbj9b.png

Is there any way to move the controls with the head while preserving the values of the sliders? I guess I'd like for the reaction manager to only react when the local position changes, but the only option seems to be world position. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

JordyJS · Apr 2018

So upon further studying, it would seem that wire parameters are the solution here rather than reaction manager, as they use local position rather than world position!

Mark Dygert · Apr 2018

The "reactions" take place in the objects parent space, if the objects aren't parented to anything then the world is their parent.

You should parent the slider to something like it's bounding box, then parent the bounding box to the head. That way the sliders parent space is the bounding box and it stops carrying about it's position in world space.

You might have to redo your reactions since its parent space has changed, but there is a small chance they will still work.

There are some scripts that create "joysticks" and controllers, you can find them on scriptspot.com and a few other places. They do some nice parenting and limit constraints so the slider won't go past the bounds of it's parent, all with very few clicks. They aren't that hard to make once and copy or even to script your own.

JordyJS · Apr 2018

Mark Dygert said:

The "reactions" take place in the objects parent space, if the objects aren't parented to anything then the world is their parent.

You should parent the slider to something like it's bounding box, then parent the bounding box to the head. That way the sliders parent space is the bounding box and it stops carrying about it's position in world space.

You might have to redo your reactions since its parent space has changed, but there is a small chance they will still work.

There are some scripts that create "joysticks" and controllers, you can find them on scriptspot.com and a few other places. They do some nice parenting and limit constraints so the slider won't go past the bounds of it's parent, all with very few clicks. They aren't that hard to make once and copy or even to script your own.

Thanks a ton Mark! I've currently got it working via Wire Parameters, constraints, and frozen positions for each control. It seems to be working pretty well, but I've gone ahead and downloaded some scripts from ScriptSpot anyways just to see how far it can go. Really appreciate the suggestions!

[3DS MAX] Moving Facial Rig Controls with Head

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