 Yet another Blender conference. So excited My name is Rik Schutte. I'm the lead animator at the Blender studio I started working at Blender during the production of Sprite Frite and Had the privilege to direct the latest open movie called Wing It, which is amazing But for today's talk, I would love to dive into facial animation We'll go over some of the fundamental rules guidelines in theory But I want to jump into Blender as soon as possible But just to give you guys some some context on on what to keep in mind when starting to animate a face So facial animation talk about structure motion appeal First look at that beautiful drawing Facial structure Obviously we have to take an account the skull and this really depends on what kind of style you're working with if you work on a project That's very cartoony get more liberty With with squash and stretch with deformation or if you're animating a squid, you know But when you work with more realistic animation, it's very important to keep in mind that there is a skull So also for the rigors out here, whenever you animate Sorry rig a brow, for example That it actually slides and this is fancy I know but slides over the skull itself and Maintains the the structure of of the actual bones underneath On top of that we have the muscles and the facial muscles All have fancy Latin names and we don't go too deep into that But the most important thing is that these muscles are that you know kind of how they work and also Are aware that they work together Muscles tend to pull They all pull For example the frontalis the big brown muscle it pulls it up But as you can see the angle of that big muscle is slightly tilted This means that whenever you animate a brow it not it's not going straight down, but it always goes in this Angle and it's not working on its own. It's working together with the Corrigator, which is the part that goes in and make a beautiful frown There's the orbicularis oculi Which is basically the big ring muscle around the eyes and when you work with a very realistic Rig it's when you squint your eyes. It's not only squinting up and down, but it's also squinting inwards now Those let's go down a little bit the corrugator These two guys they work together with the Leviter lobby superior is a lick Nasi So some scientists wanted his whole family there, but so these these muscles wanted to These muscles are actually connected to the Let's call it leviter, okay to the leviter so the corrugator if you put your fingers here and you snare you actually feel them pull Down and this is something to that. It's really trying to find those connections and Emulate that once you start posing and animating your face Well, these kind of things I'm not going over all of them one of them is the jaws the mass eater eating mass and Yeah, so so just to cover that keep in mind when animating to have a bit of an anatomical Context of what you're animating if you're animating a squid it might be different, but In animation language, we mostly talk about just the eye mask and the mouth And keep that consistent, but underneath that is the facial structure So when we raise one brow up the actual corrugator also fires a part of the other brow, which means that we get this connected shape on top of the Muscles is the fat and volume is something that we need to take in account as well, which is Volume retention in that sense. So when we smile We the the lips spread and get thinner when we push them in we get the volume never goes away So we want to emulate that As well and the same goes for the cheek when we smile it pushes up the The the cheeks and the eyes will be influenced It's pushing up everything and that's how you connect the the mouth with a smile a smile expression to the eyes when you have It depends on the the let's say the fat percentage of your character if you have a more skinny character That's older It tends to translate into creases and hopefully that's all built into your rig Otherwise you have to sculpt everything yourself That is those those three things are important to taking account when you talk about the anatomy anatomy of the face So let's talk a bit about the face and I Have to manually look this. Okay. Let's talk about the eyes. I was saying the eyes Quickest muscle in a body Generally animate on one frame like a dart One or two frame movements When you go slower than that it starts to become very floaty and it's hard for people to recognize Where where a character is looking at for example? So I start even if I go from up to down slowly it will always stagger it's always trying to focus on Yeah, the steps in between Unless we're tracking a moving object Now one thing to keep in mind also is something I try to Point out with this test when the the eye is looking left and right let the eye is not perfectly round It's always have this bulge on the part of the iris and when we move that around the eyelids are also shaping towards that So if the eye looks left the shape of the eye Changes and this also adds to the appeal of of a character animation and I direction is always a tricky one especially When you look at through the camera It is always in kind of an optical illusion. You try to pose the eyes Even though physically they're not exactly looking at it. It's always something to Graphically pose so they look at the right target and not be wall-eyed or cross-eyed Browse can be quick slower than the eyes Usually between three to ten frame range between expression changes The inner part always moves more than the outer parts. That's where the Muscle structure comes back like these muscles are these strings are shorter than the inner part and The brows are a big part of any expression and They're very delicate a little bit of change on the inner brow Curling them up already gets this more worried Expression and that's something to To really be careful about Then the mouth is I'm really covering the in it in a nutshell because I want to jump into Blender, but just to give you a bit of Inside here insides Lip sync can be fast and blend between phonemes. We don't have to say every phoneme Because that becomes very chattery and that's not how we tend to talk we always blend in between phonemes a Couple of them the M the B and the P. They always need a bit more attention. They also I Always tend to Hook up the lip sync to these phonemes because they are very Poppy and very distinct out of other phonemes so They at least need two frames to be able to read them but also need a bit of preparation before you actually hear the sound you need to close the mouth and then Have that Sound hit the right the right audio the right time So let's talk a bit about appeal. It's not Attractive like appealing is not attractive. It's more about readability about Creating a more dynamic pose so you can even have a ugly character, but still be appealing It's really about conveying that character in that moment and trying to pose it in a way that it feels believable, but also Communicates the right so it's more like aligning with the character itself a symmetry symmetry and easy symmetry Symmetry is generally Something that will happen with involuntary expressions, which means scare or being angry. That's always more similar symmetrical As for if you want to impress somebody you want to raise one eyebrow up It becomes more voluntary and therefore we we have more Yeah flexibility with with the expression so Creating a bit of offset and there's connectivity So when we open up the mouth even with cartoony characters like the cat We have a big mouth and it it's the illusion of pushing up the eyelids of the cat on the side and creating this this Line of action which has been drawn on the upper the alley character Trying to create extra support for for the storytelling Let's start animating Okay so I would love to go back in time and open up the Spring rig and the reason for that I have a couple of reasons one of them is when I saw spring for the first time I was really inspired by the Blender team and it got me, you know starting to open up lender and trying things out It really felt like a high-end character No, I was that I always thought like if there's a chance to to play with it I would love to to try it and now it's the time So we open up the rig Another reason for it and let me zoom in a little bit here As you can see it has a lot of bones It is what somewhat older rig somewhat older techniques But I think it's fun to to jump into a rig like this because you're not always working with the beautiful Disney Pre-shaped rigs this rig takes a bit more manual labor that To to make it appealing With that said I'm working in blender 4.1 and with that version. There is a new Body oh, sorry body a new bone collection system and with that it's and I'm not familiar with the older bone layer system, but in this version I can easily add new layers and have them turned on and off very Yeah easily now This character For the use of of of making my shot I did modify it quite a bit. I found the Yeah, the proportion of the eyes a bit too big, but that's a great thing with a very flexible rig you're actually able to Shape the eyes and this is all used by controls to to get a new character basically and having fun with that for for any animation test. So I am I am Only using the main bones for blocking this and the first thing what I try when when When exploring a character is To try a couple of extreme expressions just to see where are the bones at and what can I do with it? So Let's jump in here and I want to Secondary, okay. So this is usually what I use for blocking for blocking my My poses and the first thing I try is a squint so Actually, I'm now not I'm also using My secondary bones just because I need that for my expression So remember that a squint for example is not only the eyebrows. It's not only the eyes It's also the mouth and it's all pushing that together So one thing regarding closing the eyes When we close the eyes and we get this you shape it always tends to translate as relaxed It's like at peace or sleeping dreaming, but when we refer that curve Get a bit more like this it becomes more intense or worried or you know closing your eyes because Of a bad monster approaching you So that's something I want to because especially with the squint I want to create that reverse curve to emphasize the pressure being put on on the face mask, so I Tend to mainly use the the bigger bones first and this is something where you can see the Let me double-check Orientation yet set to local the orientation of the bone is straight down if I would give feedback to the rigor I would say let's tilt it already. So it's easier. It gives me already that muscle muscular angle that we covered earlier but Some some manual labor going on here. It's all fine And as you can see as I rotate the eyebrow there some Shape key being triggered. You see that there is a bit of deformation happening on the inner I'm pushing it down here right around there and These guys is the corrugator Fires more inwards now I Cannot go too far with it as you can see the rotation of this bone is a bit Yeah, so so but we'll work with it and first quints Anytime there's pressure. I want to work with quick shapes. So no Curvy shapes that always tends to look more Relaxed or distorted. So really try to to pose it so it's instantly reading as a as a squint here So this one up a little bit that and Then I believe if I scale this in X I get a bit of Not much but get a bit of that frown lines in there. I Just figured out yesterday. It was a thing And then I'll move on to the cheeks Down here Now if you work with more advanced rigs, you would also get an eye socket control which Controls the actual outer line of your or yeah, the of your eye socket to be able to shape that as well Luckily, I don't have to Pushing this up a little bit. Okay. Now for the mouth. It has a little bit of an interesting take on it It has all things combined into one bone. So if I move this around it's actually Opening but even rotating so it's it's an interesting setup, but let's try to create that So again, it's very important when you start with a new rig to Explore it see what the controls do because every week is different unless you work at a studio for a long time You get the same like setup, but And I don't it's fun. It's fun to explore rigs to see what they're capable of push in lips a little bit and what I also want to do is add a bit of Bulge Okay, then there's this main bone. I always love this one. This one kind of like moves the whole thing around I can Up even further, but it will also influence a little bit of the of the nose And this is kind of like Finding the balance with the style that you're working in I would say this is a structured like anatomical cracked character But quite stylized so I am able to push those Yeah, those those elements like pushing the nose up a little bit even though there is a bone, right or like hard structure and Then there are these inner bones And then obviously there's some more that one Trying to this is actually not the right bone, but Anyway, I already got them made I Made a bunch of poses for the post library and let's see what I how far I got Yeah, so that's way more pushed. You can see This one is from the new post library also in blender for I believe so pushing it even further get that refer shape on the on the eyebrows and Creating a bit more bulge even I think I even moved the yeah and Really try to to Support with with the squash and stretch of the of the face to to to Yeah Get the expression as much as possible And the great thing with the post library and that's what I'm about to show next is just that you're able to slide in Some of these things and even being able to when you have your selection sets made which I did Select only the browse for example, and I want to dial in a little bit of You know So that's something that I heavily would recommend when you work on on any animation project To get a post library because that gives the animator Jumping start jump start to start combining poses together and quickly get to something that Already looks appealing and as it has been approved by the director these expressions would be something to to get bound by and and have And not worried about the tiny little controls that Yeah, that could go easily off model. Let's say So bunch of these as well So what I want to do now Is Well first off, let me quickly this has been brought up by the actual the blender Animation team At the dailies last week. There was this one shot in in spring in spring. Let me actually open up the still of it There yeah They had been struggling with the shots quite a bit to get the smile working and the the face working and it always felt a bit Off even though I look I like the shot and I didn't even notice it the first time One thing to notice when you have a character in a relaxed state is to have the upper eyelids rest on top of the iris that always gives it a More relaxed state if if you have more eye whites around it It will become more intense. So even when you smile it becomes like I'm on Red Bull, which I'm actually But that's where a Smile gets more relaxed. So that's something to to take in account and again with with with the original design It has those big eyes. So it's quite Something that needs to be covered from one expression to another. That's also a reason why I modified it a little bit Where are we 3d viewport? Okay, so what are we about to do? Let me play it and I already made some some marks in here for the timing So we don't have to spend too much time on it. What I want to do is have the character react to a Suzanne hat popping out of the box But what is important when animating a face and animating a character is to show every little process that goes in In the mind of of a character that means that sub beats are very important before that a character does an action You actually do some internal thinking before you Decide or the character decide to do something. So I want to create that sub beat in there So I want to first let her do something else a character To keep keep it alive, it's actually doing something else So she will be looking on her phone screen right and then when the box comes up something in there in The corner of her eye comes up. So she noticed it then the thing comes out. That's the big expression She that we have the let's say info voluntary expression Then there's the realization of the stupid monkey coming out and then we've end up with Annoying look. So that's what we're trying to do here I have to keep track of the time. So first off, let me go back to Fault here And I'll pose so also for the body. I only turn on the bones that I want and By default, I want to relax those shoulders a little bit turn around Oh For these shots I always and this is a personal charge maybe but I don't want to counter animate on every single motion Your head is kind of like a gimbal. So I want to keep full control over that and that to not counter animate every single adjustment that I do So looking down I was I want to see a little bit of the neck here just to get the silhouette right, maybe do a bit of chest as well This Something like that Just key all my bones. I'm a messy here. I Don't organize my keys. I like Monica's when I opened up your shot on sprite, right? It was collared and everything or I was like, oh my gosh Okay, so moving these eyes down That's and maybe because it's something closer. I tend to just get a bit of cross-eye in there So it's yeah, the closer you look and Then adjusting the eyelids to it so we get a bit more of a relaxed Look to it and she's looking at Instagram and she's smiling a little bit there now with the smile Whenever you move your corners Your lips are actually translating a lot over your Over your teeth. It's it's never like and that's a thing you need to connect the whole mouth to a smile So whenever I do this, this is always looking a bit strange. So whenever I post it and I This Sorry, I can only do one thing at a time. All right only animating so pushing it slightly up But also straighten out lips a bit and Then for the sake of asymmetry moving this now also these are free-floating bones and As an animator that's something One of the few things we want to lock But only if the the bone does Well, I don't want to go to technical but if it's connected to actual blend shapes it will maintain along the Along the the mesh which actually the more more modern rigs at Blender have But in order to create a little bit of a How do you call it a little bit of a gap to get get a bit of shadow on the on the On the corner there just pushing it in a little bit Okay Key a little bit Then comes up And I'll just put it with one pose and we'll in between and and caution it later I just work with the key poser right now, but I do take in account any overlap. So when I rotate the head I Don't do it on one axis. It's always a weird. We try to Rotate but also Open it up a little bit With that also I try to incorporate some of the body in there So when that's too much Let's scale that back shift e blend to neighbor just Tweaking that a little bit and then adjusting the eyes Now here becomes a tricky part because we need to give the illusion that she's looking at The thing that just popped up. I want to Just push this one over There's a bit of that but she just notices something and she doesn't know what it is. So it's not like Keeping that relaxed state will will open up her eyes There her lids a little bit here and as this my eyes would moved over I tend to just get that apex Adjusts a little bit there not too much because this character Especially with female characters their their eyes are quite delicate. They have this specific almond shape for this in this example for example in this example for example, it has the Yeah, very Let's say a Disney kind of way of opposing the eye. So you keep that structure More than you would do with more cartoony characters, for example and then just So we're looking over Well, I just the eyebrow so a little bit and then Okay, we'll revisit that one at least we got and then the thing pops up now with the reaction Timing is key You don't want to do it too quick if it's on the same time You either don't notice the pop of the of the the monkey coming out If you do it too late, it becomes fake, right? It's not a real reaction so generally I try to Maintain a delay of around six frames. That's where you know It enters the brain and it processes and it goes back to the the expression so When the thing pops up here, I tend to Roughly six frames before we do the big reaction and it will probably cushion a bit earlier into it But this is where we start to jump up. So We rotate their body and jump back a little bit actually not this way. I Want to keep her like this but really It's like a Initial reaction to cover cover your your body with your hand, right and and to move away from whatever is is scaring you so at least for me it's This arm and also great a bit of an angle to to the line of action. So her shoulders are pointing a little bit towards the Towards the monkey, but her face is fully engaged. So we rotate her face and Let's just dial in So one thing I always do when I create poses for post libraries I never include the eyes because you're always Working with the character you're blocking it out and then suddenly you want to apply a pose and it's like looking the other way Which is also Includes the hinge. You never include that into a pose because you want to maintain your actual body animation And I I lie most of the times. So that's what I don't include in there Full frame here and let me see if we As you can see since we were looking From the side and one eye is moving further away. The eyes are now looking wall eyes. So we have to correct this move one of them Here and then this guy. It's now actually looking a little bit past it So I'll just rotate the head a little bit So you see me looking for bones quite a bit. So I am very much looking forward to any bone picker And this will be my extreme And what I now try to do is get a bit of energy in the whole body. I want her to react There's an extreme and then a saddle. It's almost like a jump Like this. So that's what I try to block out in in the torso bone here, I'll just go a couple of frames past it and just Even back and then here. Okay. So now the mouth is quite I would say generic. It's there's no Directionality to it So let's design that a little bit and what I mean with it is just Giving it a little bit of an Angle And I'm fighting the bones here a little bit because I want to keep this straight line It's a it's a quite an intense expression anytime that it's curved. It becomes more relaxed so I want to Keep that tension going on. So that's why I want this these straight lines in there And on the other side, this is more of a 2d approach to it to create a more graphical shape. It's it's Faking faking Yeah How do you say a shape that only looks great from from the camera, which is Credit creating that reverse angle and as you can see I'm struggling to get this smooth Moving them back a little bit now teeth This also really depends on the show that you're a project you're working on I Worked at Sony image works and when you're working on a very cartoony show the teeth are also being heavily deformed one way of doing it is is Not having that straight line and it's actually complimenting your your Your mouth shape One of the reason one of the ways to do it. It's just whenever you have it I would say when you're rigging teeth get some extra bones in there for the animator so they can make nice Yeah, make nice mouth shapes with teeth included. So I'm just pushing down these corners a little bit. Oh There we go And I want to have this to be the extreme so what I'm going to do I'm going to select my Face all and on the saddle I want to Hit them all and then pushing them down a little bit This will be my extreme So I want to even push it further and see get a little bit of a pop pushing these guys up a little bit more And at this stage, I'm not too delicate usually Anime drunken at its over. It's kind of like the way I used to work still working So push these guys up. Oh, what did I do? Here So Scared Realization this is a subbeat before we start to you know get annoyed by Her little broader, you know annoying her So I want to be subtle with it and live within the facial pose, but do a slight adjustment to to the eyebrows So I select the eyebrows only and just dial in something from the angry face here and Probably in between we'll do a bit of eye darting like registering what just happened and Then the brows come in but that's that's a second pass of blocking I would say then on the Realization the face that's relaxed a little bit more because the realization is also oh, it's just a Prank this down and get a bit more aroundness back into Generally on the first pass I little things can be Notes for myself for later on if I put in that like root bone and just ski it like that It gives me like already some sense I know I'm gonna revisit it later and flesh it out more, but at least I have the scaffolding like set up There's a bit of and and we do the same thing with the body It's tends to relax a little bit and maybe turn back and then I want to Get into the response so Around here rotate back engaging There's no threat anymore and Really putting the the shoulders down. It's really like ha. Oh, I slipped in both. I want to rotate the hat the other way So it's always great to shoot reference But we don't have time to go into that. There will be a talk. I think later this afternoon regarding referencing Done by healthy, which is awesome For this this time frame, I think it's fine to just wing it Okay, so now I'm doing the same thing I do a combination of different faces that I already have Which is I mask which covers the eyebrows and the eyes together Actually just the eyes Jill But also and since since this is more of a Voluntary expression. It's really like communicating. I don't like this. We can go a bit more Asymmetrical so we push this one up a little bit and Make sure the eye line when she leans forward. It's also looking at posing eyelids with these kind of These kind of expressions I always have a rule of thumb to not go over half of the Iris because if you go too low, it becomes very sleepy it can work actually it's not bad, but No, I tend to like cover one-third and you get you get the right spot usually You get a bit of asymmetry here lower face And that's where the squint where I want to Okay So we're missing a beat here But so I'm gonna just key everything Post this on the saddle because what is in between I want a bit of Closing the eyes going up and then jump into it. It's really Almost like a sigh. It's like breathe in and then settle to it so And as you can see like having a post library It's so quick to try out these multiple ways of combining compress expressions. It's really It will help you later on and When you're working with a team of animators, it's even you know, it speeds up. What was I doing? I blend the rotation So I shift E which is my shortcut for plan to neighbor and then hit R and it will only blend the rotation So I get a bit of a and I think Yeah, I do the same thing. I just Want the gist of it? Of this in-between pose We'll take the head up a little bit and then closing the eyes. I wish I had a pose for that as well, but hey can be only so lazy and Go I would say 80% and then bring it back a little bit of this I know this is these are things that I Don't really think about but it's It's probably a theory about it. Let's see from the beginning Okay, so now I'll Just innovate the root bone for this last section because I want to her to drift Into it a little bit and I will Say so we have We're almost on time are we almost out of time? Okay now Guys luckily I already did a pass on the shot So as you can see it's a bit different, but it's really trying to add those in-betweens and Change the timing on when she settles when the mouse settles and play with that. That's also something I want to do in In the blogging stage, it's that scaffolding that I want to flesh out later I don't want to figure out overlap and Change offsets later on I want to especially when I show to a director. I want to make sure that it's it's all there So this would be a Something Yeah, I would be happy with Okay, so that's about it quick thing can we do questions Who's in charge? Yeah, I have one more minute. So if there's anybody Nagging question charge. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yes, that's a good question. It's It is parallel to oh Yes, of course. So the question is when you ever you were animating a realistic character What rules who apply different from a character like this for example that deforming the teeth for a certain shape? So regarding that What I mentioned before it's more constrained to to attend anatomy so the skull is more important but also yeah, like the teeth and Hopefully the character will also be lit in a more realistic way So you get more ambient inclusion inside the mouth. So you have less of a Graphic shape that is needed But definitely you you will be more constrained and to the actual Yeah style of of rig that you're working with but with that rig for example the rigor also already put in those constraints So they work with blend shapes that only go so far that are based on on Scopes and that already is the canvas that we as animators can work with So that's that's a back-and-forth between either rigging or lighting and see what pops out. Yeah, I Think that's it