FACS Facial Rig Discussion by Puppeteer Lounge alumni Mathias Røyrvik.
Rig Tips
Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya
Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya. from Marko Vukovic on Vimeo.
Handy little tutorial to transfer UVs without creating junk nodes on the actual bind rig. You can use this technique of tweaking the Orig Shape node to quickly update you rig mesh with updated new model with the same topology, run multiple meshes with the same base Orig Shape mesh and such. #rigTips
#rigTips on Faster Character Rig
#rigTips:
Avoid using a lot of contraints in a rig unless it is absolutely
important (needed). To create a stable, fast rig use parent child
hierarchy based relationship for rig objects like controls and joint.
Often time a direct parenting is the best solution of fast, intuitive
and scalable rigs! Using a direct connection from controller to driven
joints also speeds up the rig. This is applicable for FK joint chains.
Lot of the time, we use constraints from controller to drive these
joints which in greater number significantly slows down the rig (for
complex rigs). In the fig. I used the locators to store the offset
position of each joint, so that we can directly connect from control
object to joint to maintain offset.
Always use a proper rig hierarchy system: Hierachy in a character rig is similar to a book library where you have a lot of books kept in each department in an orderly manner. Think about it, let say there is no library and we have books all over the place, you will be spending a lot of time searching that one specific book you needed! Well that is the same case with a character rig, your PC will have to process each of those nodes to process the calculation, hence a slower rig. Below is an example of a standard rig hierachy for character setup. 🙂
(Character)_TRS (Transform
Node)
(Character)_PP (Puppet
Parts Node)
Node)
Curves Node)
Node)
(Character)_GEO (GeometryNode)
(Character)_XTR (Extra
Node)
Momo01_TRS
Momo01_PP
Momo01_GEO
Momo01_XTR
Join us at Puppeteer Lounge for educational training Character Rigging Worskhops!
Setting up Multiples on Character Rigs
Here is a quick #rigTips on Setting
up the Multiples.
Multiples are traditional animation gimmicks to give you those wacky cartoon look, more like motion blur these days but 1000 times more cooler if you implement properly in 3D animation. Watch the video below which shows multiples on Eyes (yes multiples can be applied any where):
Now the trickery… Well the trick to creating Multiples is pretty
simple! You might be wondering on creating each and every rigs one by one from scratch!! Well, let us keep it simple, the idea is to just select the nodes associated with any limb and Duplicate
special with input graph connection (Yes that Duplicate Special button/command is the magic wand :). Works like a charm!!!
To make it even more simplier, easier and convenient without much headache; just duplicate special the main character node (See the image below). When duplicating special, make sure you have “Duplicate input graph” and “Assign unique name to child nodes” is checked on (Very important, we want all the input output connections well connected and ofcourse with unique name for every nodes.) After a few second, minutes or more, you have multiple copies or clones of the same rig. Now, just some
clean-up and organising to do which I will leave it upto you! And ofcourse you will also need to show hide the mesh parts which you can simply achieve by detaching and separting mesh parts for head and limbs, simple stuff, just make sure you don’t delete the mesh history; finally some tweaking with the shader for blending transparancy and that’s pretty much it. (Check the image below for breakdown 🙂
Implementing multiples will slow down the rig
as you know we have multiples for every rig, so I think it is wise to
create 2 version of rig one featuring multiples and the other the
standard one OR you can make some smart connection on the visibility of multiples mesh to show and hide depending on user input to make the rig faster to compute.
Well that’s all folks! Easy as a piece of cake. Well go on, add some multiples on your rig, let us bring back those good old tradinal animation back into CG!
Check out this cool site for reference on many trickeries (gimmicks) used in traditional animation: http://
For more exciting topics on character rigging, feel free to join Puppeteer Lounge training workshops at Puppeteer Lounge! We offer a wide range of training workshops!
We now offer an exciting new course called Super Toon Character Setup which goes over creating a super cartoony rig featuring multitudes of animation gimmicks.Watch a quick demo here 😉
BTW do check out a quick animation test below with multiples!
FLEX Super Toony Animation Test from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.
Classic Linear vs Dual Quaternion
How often do you use Dual Quaternion Skinning Method?
Notice
how Dual Quaternion method preserves the volume (very important). There is also a 3rd option
called Blended Weight where you can paint the DQ and CL influence on
bind mesh.
The dual quaternion smooth skinning method is designed to eliminate
these undesirable deformation effects. While linear smooth skinning
allows a mesh to collapse or shrink when a bone twists, dual quaternion
skinning helps to preserve volume in the mesh, creating more realistic
deformation in those problem areas.
Automated Normal Maps with ShaderFX
Automated Normal Maps with ShaderFX from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.
A quick tutorial on creating automated multiple normal maps blending using ShaderFX as per special request of my student William Esteban Méndez at Puppeteer Lounge.
I find using ShaderFX pretty comfortable than DirectX11 Shader, probably because of more flexibility and similar workflow based on game engines such as UE4. Check it out! I hope it is helpful for your next rigging show-reel/project.
“Auto Beard” rig using Maya Muscle
“Auto Beard” rig using Maya Muscle from Ty Viveiros on Vimeo.
Auto Beard rig created using Maya Muscle to prevent mesh penetration by Ty Viveiros.
Mirroring Blendshapes (rigTips)
#rigTips on easy mirroring of blendshapes
Driven Wrinkle Maps by Damien VIE
Here is an image by one of my talented student
Damien VIE showing the shading network to generate automated (driven)
wrinkle map for a characters brow and face (The entire network is pretty
big!). The maps can be projected real-time in the viewport with normal
maps (used in game) or switch to dynamic displacement maps for realistic
film quality render.
At Puppeteer Lounge, we constantly
challenge our students to come up with new and better ideas out of many
different possibilities.
Click here to learn more about rigging workshops at Puppeteer Lounge.
Check out this rigging reel by Damien to see the driven wrinkle maps in action (2:20)
DemoReel 2014 – Damien VIE – TD Rigger – Part 1: Rigging from VIE Damien on Vimeo.
SHAPES Webinar with Andrew Silke Teaser “Demo” (21-9-2014)
In this Exclusive Webinar, Andrew explains all the insides and secrets
of setting up corrective shapes using the SHAPES tool by brave rabbit.
Learn to setup an expressive facial rig and create anatomically correct
articulation for the body!
Special thanks to Puppeteer Lounge‘s guest instructor Andrew Silke from Create 3d
Characters for sharing such brilliant tips and trickery on using SHAPES
and Ingo Clemen the master behind SHAPES who was present the whole time
answering questions and sharing his insights
SHAPES 2.0 is a really powerful tool that let’s an artist to focus
more into the creative side or process of character setup and speed up
the workflow exponentially.
More Info: puppeteerlounge.com/webinar
Get SHAPES: braverabbit.de/shapes/
Andrew Silke (Create 3d Characters): create3dcharacters.com/
Ingo Clemens (brave rabbit): braverabbit.de/