Creating an Advanced Face Rig – Part Three

by David Ward
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Animation, Rigging, Tutorials

In this tutorial series, I go over how to set up a series of Shape Keys to be driven by Armature Bones, followed by setting up controls for a Mesh Deform modifier, and finishing up with some custom Bone Shapes.

In this final part of the Advanced Face Rig series, I show you all the Custom Bone Shapes I made and how they work, and then we jump in and build a Deform Mesh that completely encompasses the original Edward mesh, then apply it to the Armature. Next we go ahead and add the Deform Mesh Modifier to the original mesh (Edward) and the eyeballs, and then bind them to the Deform Mesh. We set up a couple of shapekeys on the Deform Mesh, showing how it can control the original mesh, and finally we also add some more control Bones to be used solely with the Deform Mesh.

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Discussion

39 Responses to “Creating an Advanced Face Rig – Part Three”
  1. Posts: 2
    Riste Sekuloski says:

    You knocked me dead with this tutorial. very useful and eye-opening for some frequently overlooked Blender features. Great work, thank you very much!

  3. Posts: 1
    Ash says:

    i liked all the 3 tutorials .but i’m facing one problem with the mesh.. when i tried to apply more subdivision surfaces after completion of the tutorial it didn’t perform with the mesh deform as it was performing with low subdivisions.. well i’m stucked with it.

    • Posts: 261
      David Ward says:

      yeah if you change the vertex/poly count at all (even moving the sub-surf modifier up and down in the stack), you’ll have to “bind” the mesh to the deform again

  5. Posts: 11
    Lee says:

    Great tutorial! (far too advanced for me :)

  6. Posts: 233
    John D Smith II says:

    OK, so my mesh is controlled by shape keys and these are controlled with drivers controlled by the armature and these are all controlled by the mesh deform, which in turn is controlled by empties which is finally controlled by me…Whew! Wow, now if we can just find somebody that can script an Addon that integrates the voice recognition software we could just say, “big smile!” and make Blender happy.
    Awesome tut Dave! I think I’ll have an easier time figuring out the Big Buck Bunny rigs now. Thanks man!
    “You! Yooouuu… You gotta gift my friend!”

  7. Posts: 1
    Colin says:

    Hi David – Thank you so much for these and all your past and future videos – they’ve been beyond a huge help!

    But I’m STUCK! =( I finished part #2 of this 3-part series. Then I installed blender 2.57, and all my drivers are BROKEN! Any help – anyone?? =(

  8. Posts: 4
    Leon says:

    amazing stuff! stuff makes so much sense now. no doubt people say Blender’s got the best community!

  10. Posts: 5
    Maia Couch says:

    When making the deform mesh could you use a shrinkwrap modifier to save time on making the mesh fit the shape of the head?

  11. Posts: 9
    jutomana spazzer says:

    I have a question. *Well duh*. If you bind a mid-poly model that is full body and you only have shapekey drivers on the face. You also want the limbs like the hands or the feet to still move with the armature not the deform. How do you do that. Oh one more thing. If you can do all this can you put a high poly model into a video game without the computer going slow?

  13. Posts: 3
    wilfred dedewo says:

    Amazing tuts as always :)

    Just one question

    If you had eyelashes made using particles, How would you add them to the eye lid shape keys?

    Thanks

  14. Posts: 1
    Marcelo Pietragalla says:

    Hello, David!
    Congrats for this amazing tutorial.
    I was doing some studies on riging a character using this technique, but when I bind the head model to the “head_cage” it doesn’t work. Initially, only some vertices attached to the cage, then I went on looking for intersecting mesh, I found some, corrected it, and tried to bind again, but this time none of the vertices respond to the cage deformation.
    So here I come with a few questions:
    1- The cage must cover only the base model of the head or ir should cover also all the area of deformation of the head by the shapekeys?
    2- Is there any problem with cage a little more “heigh poly”?
    3 -What can I try to solve this?

    By the way, I’m using blender 2.63a

    Thanks a lot!!!

  15. Posts: 26
    d j says:

    I may be using the mesh deform for something else too, so would I need a rig on that too for the mesh deform modifier to work.

  16. Posts: 3
    DrTeapot says:

    Awesome tutorial series! What a life saver!

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