Facial Animation Rig

22 votes
Version: 
1.4
Author Name: 
David Knight

Create a complete head rig, with facial animation controls as recommended by Jason Osipa in his book 'Stop Staring'. Starting just with a head mesh, create bones for jaw, head,neck and eyelids. Also create a couple of spline controls for the eyes and the chin. Running the 'eyerig' script creates a rollout with pick buttons for all needed bones and meshes, then sets up the eye and head rigs, as well as placing a skin modifier on the mesh, with the required bones added, ready for vertex weighting. The rig also caters for 'fleshy eyelids' that move with the eye.
Running then the 'facial_ control_system_developed' script creates the on screen controls necessary for nuanced facial animation and lipsync, using opposing sets of morph targets in order to avoid clashing. I also include a couple of scripts I found useful in making the morph targets - 'split morph' and 'copy morph'. Split morph is a very simple script that derives a right and left hand set of morph targets from one symmetrical morph, such as can easily be created in ZBrush, for example.
Copy morph transfers sets of morph targets between meshes.
Three outer rectangle splines - one for upper face, one for lower face, and a general one which has all the parameters are stored in 3 PEN attribute holders , for storing poses,visemes etc. and making shapes easily configurable, reusable from mesh to mesh. Also possible is the use of motion capture devices on the spline ctrls
Further usage notes and explanations are included in the comments for each script.

Version Requirement: 
any after max8 for scripts, max 2009 to view start file
Video URL: 
AttachmentSize
split_morphs.ms3.09 KB
copymorphs.ms1.29 KB
unrigged_face_start.max7.38 MB
eyerig.ms27.66 KB
facialControl_system_developed-final.ms126.17 KB

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nildoe's picture

Oh And no...for me just

Oh And no...for me just running the script again selecting all over..it does not work:(

eyerig script

Nil

nildoe's picture

Hi I tried the developed

Hi

I tried the developed script...on your file unrigged_face_start...

it created the UI...but it gave me another error

I ran the script...i picked the head as required...did not pick teeth or tongue as there is not one...clicked "create facial ui"

error "Unknown Property: "Morpher" in undefined

Im not a scripter..so i dunno what that is...:P:P

oh and the UI doenst do anything...

Nildo

floatingworld's picture

I have added three more tex

I have added three more tex files, whihc explain the best way to make the required assymetrical morph targets. Especially the lip morphs, which I found tricky.

AttachmentSize
Creating lip morphs in3dsmax2008.txt 6.57 KB
creating Symmetric morph targets in Z brush..txt 553 bytes
creating Symmetric morph targets in Z brush..txt 553 bytes
floatingworld's picture

Hmm, Occassionally I got

Hmm,
Occassionally I got this error because of the skin constructor not finding the bones,...this step
is not strictly necessary , I put it there to save time adding bones to the skin modifier,more or les as an afterthought, but when I got that error, I simply highlighted that part of the script, pressed numeric key pad enter and voila! it did it.So go figure. However, if you want to comment out the line dealing with the skin modifier,at the bottom of the eyerig script, feel free to do so. Also, simply running the script again works, although it's a little tedious having to pick all those bones again.
Also you might try creating a function dealing with this step and place it at the top of the roll out code, then call it at the end.I guess I should do that myself and I will but i'm a little burnt out at the moment.
I believe you can still run 'facial rig developed' anyway, which is the 'meat' of this submission.

nildoe's picture

Hi... the eye rig now

Hi...

the eye rig now loads...but when i finish selecting all the bones and splines...i click create eye rig, and i get an unknown exception error... and the maxscript window pops out highlighting

"skinOps.addBone headsup.modifiers[#Skin] headbone 0"

using max2009 64bit

thx
Looks good
Nildo

floatingworld's picture

I have re-uploaded the file.

I have re-uploaded the file. I am using max 2009 x64 so unfortunately you would need this version to view the start file. However the max scripts will still run on any version post max8.
Also there was a small problem in the eyerig script which I have fixed and re-uploaded.

MaX boX's picture

Yes i have the same problem

Yes i have the same problem to.

ded_banzai's picture

I cannot open

I cannot open unrigged_face_start.max in my max2008x64. I downloaded this twice. It says "File open failed" :(
Anyone with the same problem?

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