Face Rigging

[Cerez]

Any detailed tutorials out there on how to rig and setup a character model's face for JKA to get the blinking, the mouth, and the vertex animations to work?

[mrwonko]

There are no vertex animations, as far as I'm aware...

 

There's no real difference between the face and other bones, so look for rigging tutorials for your modelling program? Which one are you using?

[Cerez]

I'm aware of the basic model rigging, but what about the smiles, frowns, etc.? How does the game know what parts of the face texture to shift/distort?

 

And the eyelids, how does one set up the eyelids?

[mrwonko]

Just take a look at the skeleton - there are a couple of bones in the face, like one for each eyelid.

[Cerez]

Oh, so all that's needed is already in the skeleton? All the facial animations are handled using the bones in the face?

[AshuraDX]

yes - that's right

[Cerez]

Shweet! Thankyou! 

[Asgarath83]

Use Cranium for all head, cervical for nek, 50-50 cervical cranium in the cranium - cervical vertex junction,

leye and reye for eyes for orbiculars, these control the eyes blinks animation and the face_dead closed eyes.

the jaw bone, for the lower jaw and lower teeth 50-50 cranium \ jaw for the edges of the lips and the junction between upper and lower jaw. this control the mouth open and close into the talking.

ceyebrows for the front rig for eyebrows of face_frown face_aux animation

it's pretty intuitive, the pricipal bones are that and they affected exactly like the bones of human head.

that's all

[Tempust85]

Just play around with the weights until you achieve the look you're after. Once you have decent weights, you can use this model as a guide for future models.

[Wystan]

Hi all, what bone does model use for smiling?

[mrwonko]

Why don't you just import the animation and take a look? Or look in ModView. It's what I'd have to do to find out, too.

[Cerez]

Hi all, what bone does model use for smiling?

 

I might be able to tell you in a couple of days, @@Wystan. I still haven't reached that point in the rigging process yet... I think it may be lblip_eff and rblip_eff, based on their position, but I'm not sure yet.

[Wystan]

Ok, i'll be waitin

[Asgarath83]

Try with lblip2 \ rblip2 ltlip2 and \ rtlip2 bones. the effects are shapes. they cannot rig much good : \

but i never seen a model with a smile rigging, so this is just ipotethical. As Cerez Told, the Bones origins are on the edge of the lips... so... maybe they can work on that.

Let we know how you got.

ps: i suppose you need to use these bones only of the right and left edges of upper and lower lips. ^^ be careful, make only a minimul weight value, like 0.25 for each bone.

[Wystan]

thanks

[Cerez]

As @@Asgarath83 says, experiment a little, @@Wystan. Just make sure you keep backup copies to your file before making the changes. That's what I'll do, too.

 

It's either lblip2\rblip2, or ltlip2\rtlip2, or both ("t" is for "top", and "b" is for "bottom" lip, I'm guessing), if additional bones are at all required.

[Cerez]

Topology-wise, how do the eyelids work? Do they need to be on the head_eyes_mouth mesh, or on the head_face mesh? How does the game create the blink animation? What vertices does it stretch, or move? Or does that entirely depend on the weighting?

 

Can the eyelids be a separate surface hidden behind the face that's moved down when the character blinks, or do they need to be vertices of the face? I'm confused... 

[minilogoguy18]

It's all about the weights, you also don't have to set your models up exactly like they did as far as naming of the meshes.

 

Anything with the extension _eff isn't used, those are left over objects from Softimage's chain effectors, they should be deleted as whoever imported the original skeleton to 3DS Max a super long time ago didn't do it.

 

The eyelids are parts of the face or head or however you have it segmented, not separate objects, the bones l_eye and r_eye are what control the blinking, the eyeballs themselves don't move, it's a common misconception.

[Cerez]

Thanks @@minilogoguy18. So adding the separate eyelids was not a good idea, then...

 

But if the eyelids are stretched from vertices of the head/face, how does one achieve a proper and smooth texture on them?  I've seen some models made for JKA that had a neat, separate texture on the eyelids. Or is that just my eyes deceiving me?

[minilogoguy18]

That's another area, you just gotta know how to blend the textures well at the UV map seams. If you're using blender aren't you able to import a model and just look at the weights?

[Cerez]

That's another area, you just gotta know how to blend the textures well at the UV map seams. If you're using blender aren't you able to import a model and just look at the weights?

 

I'm using an old version of 3DS Max. I can import the GLM models, but not with the weights, so I don't really have a reference...

 

So it's just a matter of balancing the weights on the eyelids, then? (So that when they stretch they leave a clean-looking texture?)

[minilogoguy18]

Yes, you want them to stretch naturally, not having too much influence in any one place, only the edge should say have 100% influence with the eye bone, from there it's blended with the cranium bone. This applies for any joint.

 

It's not the same software but you could probably watch some of my videos where I'm going through the process, I don't do the face because the character doesn't line up well but it's really the same concept with any joint in the body.

[Archangel35757]

@@Cerez, Since you are using 3ds Max then use my dotXSI Maxscript importer and import either Kyle or Luke on one of the facial animations... the skin weights will be imported and you can study how they weighted areas of the face to the relevant facial bones.

[Asgarath83]

@@Cerez some High quality model have the eyelids separates by the eyeballs. the lower quality model has not this separation, some models, too have the eyelid textures into the face texture and the model has not a good eyelid facial animation.

however...

for Face_Frown Face_Aux you need to rig the front of mesh to ceyebrows bone,

for eye blinks and eyelid movement rig to leye and reye. i not know how act this bones into the animations... maybe they rotate of some degrees and so, stretch the texture with some kind of rolling.... i think it works in that mode... but is just a my teory.

howevery the leye and reye bones control the blinks effect

as told by @@minilogoguy18

[Cerez]

Update: After installing Blender and setting up @@mrwonko's plugins, I was able to get a good look at the eyelid topology on Jan:

 

 

 

As you can see, the model needs to preferably have formed eyelids with eyelashes, which are then weighted gradually to the eye bones, like a regular joint, as @@minilogoguy18 has said.

 

Hopefully this information will help someone else wondering this same question.