Control-free facial setup - Paolo Dominici

No more sliders, no more confusing geometries! Just character mesh!
No expression, no scriptJob or any other scripting trick was used.
Simply an animator-friendly facial setup!
More stuff on http://mcbob.altervista.org/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Maya
• Rigging
• Controls
• Facial
• Rig
• CGI
• 3D
• Tool
• Paolo
• Dominici

[dacciuntajo]

The mesh is splitted into several pieces, each piece works as a control... the trick here is just to apply the deformers to the controls themselves avoiding double transformations.

Of course you can play with your animation curves. In this case as you see I decided to do everything translation based, so in the graph editor you will see just translational curves. That is because sometimes it's annoying to switch from a manipulator to another one when you do posing.

[dacciuntajo]

My intention is to do a full "control-free" rig and make it public... well... as soon as I have time =)

[jamil1985]

I showed ur video to anzovin (makers of setup machine and face machine) they really like ur approach to this control free setup and are planning to implement it in the future with their face machine plugin!!! :)

[Animation747]

Like pixar's Marionette

[Streusel95]

You know how to make awesome riggs :)

[mattmit]

that seems like a fast rig by looking at it, but do you have issues selecting the correct part sometimes? from some angles?

[TheAeroflair]

This is really nice.

Which software is this?

[Goig3D]

Interesting!

I had to try it in 3Ds Max and it's possible to do the same. Well, at least on the simple test I did. I simply duplicated the mesh, cut it so as to create the control area and then link a bone to this control area, then using a Skin Wrap modifier the control area follows the deformation of the original mesh seamlessly.

Thanks for sharing your idea, I'll try it on a more complex rig next time.

[leionaaad]

nice rig, dude. the best rig is the one wich is user friendly, yours is pretty close. However, beside the deformations, you may need something to actually save out the poses. Or anything for phonemes or some quick poses. With the current controls it would be a pain to make a lipsync

[r4jk3]

could you post a tutorial, please, ill subscribe, thank you