{"id":2343,"date":"2017-07-18T21:54:34","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T02:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/?p=2343"},"modified":"2017-07-18T21:54:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T02:54:34","slug":"rig-improvements-head-face-edges-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/2017\/07\/rig-improvements-head-face-edges-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rig Improvements \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Head\/ Face Edges (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the previous post, I introduced changes made to my rig around the head\/ face area for my recent project. This required a drawing at five different head positions for each character and projecting each onto a flat plane.<\/p>\n

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Since I animated the eyes and mouth within Lightwave, these drawings were actually temporary. The final image used for the final projections actually looked like this:<\/p>\n

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The eyes, nose, nostril, mouth, and chin mark were then modeled in Modeler – with morphs created for the eyes and mouth. This borrowed the technique I used in a previous project, Taking Shape (although the separate eyes was used in a project prior to that, Ninja Tales).<\/p>\n

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Technically, I did not need to model the nose\/ nostril and instead could have kept the drawn version from the temporary file. However, I liked having more control over its rotation, position, and scale in Lightwave.<\/p>\n

Each feature of the face had its own bone, which were all parented to the head bone – the bone that controlled the position and rotation of the face image planes. Below is a schematic view of this portion of the rig:<\/p>\n

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One of the main characters also modeled the front two bangs for additional animation control, which is reflected in the image above.<\/p>\n

For each of the five different head positions, I placed the facial features in their correct position and scale (for the nose, I also had to adjust its rotation. These keyframes were saved in the base Rig Scene for the character, and then I was able to copy these settings at any point within future scenes.<\/p>\n

If a movement required a head turn, I would simply sequence the keyframes as needed (usually on 1’s or 2’s, depending on the movement). This could have been better automated\/ controlled and might be something I pursue in future projects.<\/p>\n

Overall, this process wasn’t very difficult or time consuming to create since I reused many of the facial features. Thus they didn’t have to get modeled from scratch each time for every character. It did take a few extra minutes to animate head turns, but it was worth it for the additional control of the edge lines.<\/p>\n

For the last part in this series of posts, I will discuss how the movement\/ orientation of the head was controlled during animation – ensuring the cartoonish look I originally intended when deciding on this rig setup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the previous post, I introduced changes made to my rig around the head\/ face area for my recent project. This required a drawing at five different head positions for each character and projecting each onto a flat plane. Since I animated the eyes and mouth within Lightwave, these drawings were actually temporary. The final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[128,118,119],"class_list":["post-2343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ad-wizards","tag-lightwave","tag-shapes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2349,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343\/revisions\/2349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}