Advanced 3D

Animation and
Scripting
 Module 4
Facial Rigging Part 1
Facial animation is an integral component of character animation.
The face of a character can be animated to impart a range of
emotions and expressions. In Maya, expressions can be made
with a rigged face, or by using the Shape Editor and sculpting
tools. The advantage of using the Shape Editor is that you can
set individual expressions and swap between them freely, or even
combine them with varying strengths for each one.
Before you start to build your rig, you need to do some
investigation work. The model you are rigging and its topology
are critical to how well the character will move, especially if, like
in this instance, you are focusing on the face. It's important that
the topology is not only clean but that the edge loops follow
natural muscle lines. If they do the face will deform in a much
more realistic way
Once you are happy with the topology it's time to start creating
your first batch of blendShapes and doing this now will also
highlight any trouble areas with the mesh early on. These
blendShapes are full facial poses covering all the main
expressions needed, but sectioned into key areas like the mouth
and eyes. We are looking for the fundamental shapes here like a
smile, frown and so on, as well as the upper and lower eyelids
fully closed.
With this rig you are going to rely on eight main controls to
manipulate the lips so it's important to also add blendShapes for
a wide mouth as well as a narrow one which could also double as
the pucker. This is so manipulating a single control can
essentially pull around the corner of the mouth to achieve a wide
number of expressions and move between all four blendShapes
at once.
With the main shapes created, it's time to move to phase two.
What you need to do next is split them into left and right sides
meaning you can pose them independently. A quick way to do this
is to create a blendShape node and then edit its weights, as
illustrated in the box on the left. This will limit its influence to just
one side of the model meaning you can then duplicate it and
keep this copy to create your specific side.
The next stage in the facial rig is to build your skeleton and as
mentioned earlier, for this setup we are going to be using both
joints and blendShapes to pose the characters features. I like to
use blendShapes as they can give you more precise shapes, but
then the joints can help to push and pull areas of the face around
to give you more flexibility.
Whether you create controls which float in front of the character's
face or use a separate user interface is up to you, or more likely
up to the animators who will be using your rig. Now it's time to
start creating these controls and for this tutorial we will be using a
combination of the two. A main UI will be used to control the
majority of the blendShapes, but a series of controls will also help
to manipulate the rig in places where it needs to move in all three
axes.
When using a separate UI as we are, you have to approach the
rig differently. Traditionally you could use Constraints to tie a
specific joint to its master control and in turn this control would
naturally follow the head. With a UI, the controls are static and
don't follow the head so using Constraints will lock the joints to
the controls meaning if you move the head the joints stay where
they are. A way around this is to use direct connections instead of
constraints.
But using direct connections via the
Connection Editor will force the
translations, rotations and scale attributes
to match those of the controls. Your joints
inherently have translation values applied
which will end up changed when
connected. You could work on an offset
system or you could create a locator in the
place of each joint, freeze its transforms
and then Parent Constraint the joint to the
locator. So the locator, now with zero
attributes, will drive the joint.
With the locators now in place and the
joints parent constrained to them, you can
connect the controls from the UI's
attributes to the locators using the
Connection Editor. If the locators are also
parented to the head control they will
follow its movement regardless of where
the UI controls are. Also, the joints will
now move relative to the head's position
and not be locked to the UI meaning you
can also place the UI anywhere in the
scene.
It's time to start connecting the
blendShapes and introduce the first utility
node, which will be the Condition node.
This is my favourite utility node and what it
does is take a value, like the Y translation
of a control and, if it goes over or under a
specific value it outputs another value. As
an example, if the control goes over 0 in
the Y translation then we can trigger the
smile blendShape, if not, it is ignored.
So let's set this up.
Open the Node Editor and select the
Lip_Left_Outer_Control, clicking the Add
Selected Nodes to Graph button to bring it in.
Now press Tab in the Node Editor and start
typing Condition in the small window and
select it from the menu below to create it.
Finally select the main blendShape node on
the character's head model, called
Head_BShapes, and follow the first step
again to bring it into the Node Editor.
Now connect the Lip_Left_Outer_Control.translateY attribute to the First
Term attribute in the Condition node.
Leave the Second Term as 0 and change Operation to Greater Than.
Next connect Lip_Left_Outer_Control.translateY to the ColorIfTrueR. (This
means when the First Term is Greater Than the Second Term it will use the
true value.)
Connect the OutColorR attribute to the Left Smile blendShape attribute and
move the control to see what happens.
The smile blendShape is now triggered only when the control
is moved in the Y axis, but it may be influencing it too much.
You can use a multiplyDivide node to reduce its influence and
slow down the movement. In the Node Editor press Tab and
create a multiplyDivide Node.
Connect the Lip_Left_Outer_Control.translateY attribute to
the input1Y attribute in the multiplyDivide node and its
OutputY attribute to the ColorIfTrueR attribute on the
Condition Node
When you move the Lip_Left_Outer_Control, the smile will
look no different, that is until you adjust the Input2X attribute
in the multiplyDivide node, which is the amount the Input1X
value is being divided by. Changing this to 0.5 will halve the
amount the blendshape moves because it's halving the Y
translation value. Equally, a value of -0.5 will reverse it and
half it, which is important to remember when you connect
future controls.
That's just the smile blendShape added, but you can now
follow the same process to make the X translation of the
control trigger the wide mouth blendShapes. With the
opposite directions, so a minus X and Y movement, trigger
the pucker and frown shapes, making sure you also change
the Operation in the Condition node to Less Than. This will
ensure that those blendShapes are triggered only when the
value drops below 0 rather than above.
You don't always have to create a new node to edit the
influence a control has over something. With the jaw
movement, rather than use a utility node you can use a
simple, direct connection to make the translations of the
control effect the jaw joints' rotations. When connected Maya
will automatically create a unitConversion node by default
between the connections which you can use to your
advantage.
If you find your jaw is rotating too quickly you can then edit
the Conversion Factor attribute found in the unitConversion
node, rather than introducing another multiplyDivide node to
slow it down.
With just these few nodes you can see how much we have
achieved and from here you could happily work your way
around the face and connect up the remaining controls. We
can, however, do more with the help of the blendColors node.
Even though this can work with your typical RGB values, you
can also utilise this node to blend between two other values
or controls, making switching and blending easier.
An important part of any mouth rig is for it to have the ability
for the lips to stick together, regardless of where the jaw is.
Imagine the character needs to chew something, even
though the jaw is moving the lips need to remain sealed. To
help achieve this you can use the blendColors node to dictate
whether the lower lip driver locators follow the jaw or the
upper lip control.
First you need to divide the lip control
locators into three groups. Upper_Lip,
Lower_Lip and Corner_Lip and make sure
their pivots are in the same place as the
jaw joint. This is so they rotate around the
same point. Next bring the
StickyLips_Control, Lips_Control,
Lower_Lip group and also the Jaw driver
locator into the Node Editor and create
a new blendColors node.
Connect the Lips_Control.rotate attribute to the
blendColors.color1 attribute. Repeat with the jaw locator
connecting its rotations to the blendColors.color2 attribute.
Connect the blendColors.output into the Lower_Lip group's
rotation attribute. If you manipulate the Blender attribute on
the blendColors node the lower lips will blend between the
two values.
Connect the StickyLips_Control's Y translation into the
Blender attribute so the control drives it.
As an extra tip you may find that due to the linear nature of
blendShapes, the eyelids move through the eyes when
activated rather than over them. In this instance you may
need to create a halfway point blendShape for when the eyes
are partially closed. This can then be added as an in-between
target on your blendShape node, which is then triggered up
to a specified point before the main shape takes over.
Reverse and plusMinusAverage nodes. The names are pretty
self explanatory with the Reverse node effectively inverting a
given value, the plusMinusAverage node is similar to the
multiplyDivide node, except it allows you to perform different
mathematical equations.
https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/how-to-rig-a-face-
for-animation