The joints are connected curves which I control with blend shapes. The idea was to make a game ready rig. I also created a cgfx shader with support for blending between normal maps. All thoughts and feedback are welcome.
Congrats on your rig, it looks really nice. The overall presentation is good and your controls seem animator friendly. The shader stuff doesn’t stand right out away but everything looks good.
Some comments that I have.
It seems like there are some weird inbetweens on the outer brow shapes. You might take a look at the blendshape or the joint orientations during the moves to see they are following what an animator would expect. Right now they just might get some arcs in the animation they won’t be expecting. Also the controls for those seem to be up and down controls the arc, but the in and out controls the squint?
You have some controls on the face and then some values that you control in the channel box. You might take a look at trying to move those out of the channel box. That way the animator doesn’t have to constantly move over to that channel box.
Lastly, the animation you have to show it running looks good, but you might consider doing some lip sync animation. Lip sync usually brings out all the imperfections in skinning as well as all the inbetween and control issues that you have in the rig. That way you can fix that and show one of the most important aspects of a face, dialogue performance.
[QUOTE=Sariel;23771]Congrats on your rig, it looks really nice. The overall presentation is good and your controls seem animator friendly. The shader stuff doesn’t stand right out away but everything looks good.
Some comments that I have.
It seems like there are some weird inbetweens on the outer brow shapes. You might take a look at the blendshape or the joint orientations during the moves to see they are following what an animator would expect. Right now they just might get some arcs in the animation they won’t be expecting. Also the controls for those seem to be up and down controls the arc, but the in and out controls the squint?
You have some controls on the face and then some values that you control in the channel box. You might take a look at trying to move those out of the channel box. That way the animator doesn’t have to constantly move over to that channel box.
Lastly, the animation you have to show it running looks good, but you might consider doing some lip sync animation. Lip sync usually brings out all the imperfections in skinning as well as all the inbetween and control issues that you have in the rig. That way you can fix that and show one of the most important aspects of a face, dialogue performance.[/QUOTE]
There are defensively some weird in and out shapes which I should look in to.
About the channel box VS the view port, yes I should fix this also. This was something I never though of until one animator tested the rig.
Lastly about the lip sync. I think this is a good idea. I was actually starting with one but it was way to time consuming to be able ti finish on deadline. Though I think is good to show of and will try to make time for.
Do you have any suggestions how I could show of the normal blending part even more?
Looks nice, one thing that caught my eye is the last part of the turn table animation; the chin doesn’t seem to be inheriting the orientation of the head, sort of if it were just Point constrained. It could be the lighting or even possibly the skinning, but I thought it looked odd.
Well, I think I know which part you mean, and yes, it do look like it’s not following the rest of the head property. In this case it’s just the animation which is kinda of. I’ve been getting some good feedback and will probably redo some part of the rig and animation and this will be one of the things I fix.
[QUOTE=hazmondo;23776]Looks nice, one thing that caught my eye is the last part of the turn table animation; the chin doesn’t seem to be inheriting the orientation of the head, sort of if it were just Point constrained. It could be the lighting or even possibly the skinning, but I thought it looked odd.
Yeah, there are few ways you could show off the normal map stuff. His face is pretty wrinkly and dirty already, so sometimes the deepening of the wrinkles will be more felt than noticed.
Usually bringing in the camera to the brows and crows feet areas will allow you to show those areas off. You might be able to show a debug view of your normal maps blending, but that might be overkill.
One thing though, Sariel, your comment about the animator working in the outliner VS the viewport: this is definitely something I will keep in mid for future rigs, but I had no time to change this one.
