Hey all,
So, after a few minor complaints about the face rig location, I decided to do a minor rig update. Version 3.0.1 now has the ability to shift Basic Guy's face rig to the left or right side of his face. I guess people were having "a hard time posing him with the rig there". I'm not sure if I understand that completely (you all know that you can turn the rig(s) visibility on and off... right?). Or, were they having a hard time animating the face with the rig there?
Either way, you now have more options! I should have thought of that initially, but I didn't...doh!
Anyway, thanks for all the great feedback! I hope that you are all enjoying the latest update! I can't wait to finish my friggen work deadline (I'm at the end of "crunch" right now on our latest game title... gha!) so that I can take a stab at animating him again!
Here is the new version:
Basic_Guy_v3.0.1.rar
Here is the link to the rig overview again (for those that love boring camtasia videos;) ):
BasicGuy_v3_overview.mov
As always, enjoy and happy animating!
Tim
15 comments:
Hey Tim,
Congrants on Basic Guy 3.0.1. Your face rig is very fast. From my personal previous experiences with Anzovin's The Face Machine yours is much more efficient. Don't stop perfecting it, i plan on entering the next 11Second club competition with your rig :).
After playing with it i have a couple of minor suggestions.
1. It's a tad bit difficult to make a kissing/puckering/small UUU shape with the lips. Maybe in future updates you can add a additional control to the L/R cheeks were you can drag out and in the corners of the mouth.
2. Hand Cup, The pinky finger has the "Hand Cup" feature. I thought it would a great idea to also add it to the ring and pointer fingers. This will allow the hand poses would be more expressive.
3. Offsetting arms & legs. I'm not sure if you added this, i found the offset controls for the torso. I think it would be a fantastic if you were to also add these features to the arms and legs. Maybe even the head..
Either way it's an awesome rig and thanks for sharing it.
Rey
Hey, wow, you left me some very kind words on my blog, Tim. Animatable pivot realli isn't all that, but thanks for commenting! I would gladly show you how I did it if you'd like.. Anyhoo I'm having a blast messing around with Basic Guy.. The facial stuff is sweeet! Kindda wish he has twist bones on upperarm and legs as well though...
Thanks for sharing!
Hey Rey!
Thanks for the comments/suggestions! Yeah, a few months ago I bought and tested The Face Machine...and I came to the same conclusion as you. It seems AWESOME, but seems a bit slow (not necessarily inefficient per se, but it does seem a bit slow). I almost stopped my entire rigging process to switch over to TFM... but after thinking of all the people that I'd have to support, I decided that I better know exactly what's going on with the rig... and so, picked back up on where you see the rig now. But, I do want to revisit TFM and delve deeper into what they're doing (as I said, it is awesome!)
Onto your bullet points!
1a) Kissing/puckering:
Try this rig combo:
- BGCtrl_jaw (X,Y): -1,0
- BGCtrl_upLipCurl (X,Y): 1,1
- BGCtrl_lowLipCurl (X,Y): 1,1
that's how I "see" doing a kissing face pose
1b) UUU:
- BGCtrl_jaw (X,Y): -1,-0.12
- BGCtrl_upLipCurl(X,Y): 1,1
- BGCtrl_lowLipCurl(X,Y): 1,1
- BGCtrl_upCenSlide(Y): 0.35
- BGCtrl_lUpLip1Slide(Y): 0.215
- BGCtrl_rUpLip1Slide(Y): 0.215
- BGCtrl_lowCenSlide(Y): -0.35
- BGCtrl_lLowLip1Slide(Y): -0.2
- BGCtrl_rLowLip1Slide(Y): -0.2
of course you can tweak that even further, but that's roughly how I see that UUU pose.
It might seem like you're animating a lot of controls, but I think it lets you have much more fine control over the face. With that said, you can also turn on the individual face rig controls in the BG_FaceCtrlRig (The ring around all the face sliders). You'll see a bunch of attributes that say "off" by default. Switching the "IndivLips" to "On" should allow you to do even more tweaks to the lip shapes (make sure that the body rig visibility is "on" as well).
2) Hand Cup: I totally agree! This will take a little bit to incorporate, but shouldn't prove too hard. So yes, I do plan on adding this!
3) Offsetting Arms&Legs: Once again, I totally agree. This has been on my list of "to-adds" for a while now. But, I wanted to release BG v3 sooner rather than later;) But yes, this is a must have!
Thanks for the time to write a great critique!
Yo Lizardj:
Sure thing! I was really impressed with how you did all your rig "stuff"! I need to, at some point, tear apart the Teddy rig and see what makes him tick:D And if you feel like sharing the animateable pivot thing... I'm listening!
And yes, more twisting bones is a definite must have. That should happen at the same time as the ability to offset the arms&legs (see comments to Rey). As to when that will happen...?
Thanks again for all the great comments! So far, everybody has been very positive about the latest release! Honestly, I always get a bit nervous about a new release. But, so far it's been a great to hear all the happy animators!
Cheers,
Tim
Hey tim Glad you finished mr basic guy here. I do have a question is it possible to add props and such to basic guy [hair,beard ect] if so how could we do that
hi Tim, I wrote you an email with a sample Maya file of animate-able pivot control setup; just thought I'd let you know so it doesn't get buried in spam.
Hey The rig is looking pretty cool. I really liked the asthetic of the basic guy rig. All that was missing was a mouth. The new one looks cool but he seems to have lost that asthetic the old one had. I can't complain though, as it looks good anyway. Just differently.
My comment about the face rig itself is more than an idea. You don't need to do it, But one idea I've seen where I work is having the face rig actually located at the origin and below the grid. Not far. But it gets it out of the set elements, and then there is a camera locked on it with all other objects in the set hidden to that camera except it's respective face cam. This allows the animator to animate to the camera without having to retract to find the face box. The just tear away a panel that has the face cam. I don't know if this is making anysense. It is just an idea of course. There might be a reason everyone parents it to the head. It's just an idea.
Keep on, Keeping on.
MAN...
YOU.. ARE..
AMAZING!
thanks so much
really..!
wow!
hey Chickens and beandip,
thanks for the feedback! I understand what you're saying about the face rig... I've actually done that in the past before too. It does seem that everybody likes the rig right next to the head. I am not a huge fan of that myself, but was going on what most people seem to like. Ultimately, I'd like to implement the rig into the GUI, but I haven't spent much time with MEL lately and that is beyond me. But, that is where I want to get to. I have some other ideas that might be "cool" too...
And yeah, the old Basic Guy (no face) does have a bit more "appeal"...not really sure why. I think it might be that without the face there you imagine what it would like look if he did have a face. And now that he has one, it is different than what you imagined...?
Yo Eduardo,
Thanks man... and you are more than welcome!
Cheers!
Tim
hey tim I'm loving the rig its sooo great,
just a few comments and suggestions,
1, the mouth narrow control on the jaw would be better if it went a little further, I'm finding i want to push the corners in even more in some poses.
Also a nose ctrl would be really great, I find it would add more to a snarling face.
Other than that its fantastic. Ill post my animation when I'm done :)
oh and one more thing i would move the BGCtrl_BrowSqueeze up a bit so you can marquee select the 2 upper lid ctrls
Hey Justin,
Thanks for taking the time to post comments!
Mouth Corners/Nose: have you tried to play with the individual controls for the face? If you select the ring around the face controls, you'll see that in the channel box there are triggers for turning on/off individual controls for finer tweaks. You'll also find controls for the nose there as well. I didn't create a main window control object for the nose. I figured that most wouldn't want it there and the fine controls would be enough...maybe I'm wrong...?
Brow Squeeze position: if you select the control and then press the up arrow you will get to the parent of that control. You can then move/resize that control (or any of the face controls) to your hearts content!!!
I hope that helps ya man...
Cheers,
Tim
Hey Tim
Cool that helps so much!!, I had no idea about the individual controls, they will definiatly come in handy. I would recommend adding a nose ctrl in if you feel up to it, I find its handy for getting snarls and snears as well as layering in for dialogue. Other than that its still one of the best rigs I've had the pleasure to animate, Than you so much for giving this away to the community.
Justin
Yo (again!) Justin,
Awesome... I'm glad that helped!
I'll play around with the nose controls.. it'd be easy enough to add, but I don't want the face rig to get too overwhelming. It sounds like a lot of people want me to push the lip width control as well... The issue with releasing a rig before I animate it myself;)
And you're more than welcome man.
cheers and happy animating,
Tim
Hey Tim,
I think you have something good going here. Your face rig has gotten some really positive responses. I think you should take advantage of the situation. Why don't you make a DVD video tutorial on building an advanced facial rig like yours. I'd buy it!
There are not many advanced DVD tutorials out there. The only decent face tutorial that comes to mind is Aaron Holy's "Facial Rigging for Feature Animation". But to me your facial rigging is more animator friendly and it seems that you were able to make a very fast face rig.
Rey
hah!...you flatter me Rey!
You have however brought up an interesting idea. It's actually one that I have thought about before. But honestly, I don't know how into "selling" my tutorial(s) I would be. When I do tutorials, I have no issue giving them away...for free. They are one way for me to actually remember how I did something. It's also way too easy for one person to upload a torrent with it anyway. So that wouldn't be fair to those that actually paid for the DVD or whatever form my tutorials would be in. Also, it's not like I'm really doing anything ground breaking in my rigs either. I've more or less just used a lot of ideas that are already out there. Being an animator first and a rigger second, I actually use my rigs and therefore know what I want better or changed (My change list is growing with basic Guy at the moment!).
So the "good" news is that yes, I do plan on doing more tutorials in the future(I actually "plan" on doing a tutorial/breakdown for each part of my rig). The "bad" news is that I have no idea as to when they will actually get done.
I guess though that if people actually are willing to pay me for my work, I guess I could put up a "donate" thing with PayPal or something like that. God knows that I wouldn't frown at random deposits;)! This way people could donate whatever they thought my work was worth... It is "interesting" though to think about: if every person that has downloaded my rigs had paid a dollar or something like that....wow!
Anyway, thanks again for the flattery! Getting a comment like that on my blog is actually really rewarding to me! Probably worth more to me than money... I spend money like a leaky faucet holds water. I'll remember kind words much longer;) It also makes me want to sleep less and work harder (and I already don't sleep much!).
As always, cheers and happy animating!
Tim
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