Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right, 3rd Edition

Introduction xv

PART I GETTING TO KNOW THE FACE 1

Chapter 1 Learning the Basics of Lip Sync 3

The Essentials of Lip Sync 4

Speech Cycles 6

Starting with What’s Most Important: Visemes 8

The Simplest Lip Sync 15

Chapter 2 What the Eyes and Brows Tell Us 21

The Two Major Brow Movements 22

The Upper Lids’ Effect on Expression 24

The Lower Lids’ Effect on Expression 26

Eyelines: Perception vs. Reality 28

Distraction Is the Enemy of Performance 30

Chapter 3 Facial Landmarking 31

Introduction to Landmarking 32

Landmarking Mouth Creases 35

Landmarking Brow Creases 39

Landmarking the Tilt of the Head 42

PART II ANIMATING AND MODELING THE MOUTH 45

Chapter 4 Visemes and Lip Sync Technique 47

Sync: Wide/Narrow Grows Up 48

The Best Order of Sync Operations 56

Sync Example 1: “What am I sayin’ in here?” 63

Sync Example 2: “Was it boys?” 69

Chapter 5 Constructing a Mouth and Nose 75

The Best Edge Flow 76

The Big Picture 78

Building the Lips 78

Building the Surrounding Mouth Area 81

Building the Nose 84

Continuing Toward the Jaw and Cheek 87

Building Teeth 88

Building the Tongue 92

The Mouth Wall 95

Chapter 6 Mouth Keys 97

Order of Operations 98

Preparing to Build a Key Set 99

Default Shapes, Additive Shapes, and Tapering 100

Building the Shapes 114

PART III ANIMATING AND MODELING THE EYES AND BROWS 145

Chapter 7 Building Emotion: The Basics of the Eyes 147

Building an Upper Face for Practice 148

Using “Box Head” 158

Rules of the Game 159

Example Animations 164

Continuing and Practicing 177

Chapter 8 Constructing Eyes and Brows 179

Building Eyeballs 180

Building the Eye Sockets 183

Building the Brow and Forehead 189

Chapter 9 Eye and Brow Keys 197

Brow Shapes and Texture Maps 198

Building Realistic Brow Shapes 207

Tying Up Loose Ends 226

PART IV BRINGING IT TOGETHER 229

Chapter 10 Connecting the Features 231

Building the Ear 232

Assembling the Head Pieces 237

Chapter 11 Skeletal Setup, Weighting, and Rigging 245

Skeleton 246

Eyelid Rigs 254

Extra Eye Fun 265

Sticky Lips 270

Chapter 12 Interfaces for Your Faces 281

The Two Big Problems of Facial Control 282

Buffer Networks 283

Sliders 291

Skeletal Control 301

Layered Controls 304

Corrective, Contextual, XYZ, Half, and Dominant Shapes 308

Just Interface Me 319

Chapter 13 Squash, Stretch, and Secondaries 321

Local Rigs 322

Global Rigs 326

The “Real” Character Has No Rig! 330

Not Using W t raps Changes a Few Things 331

Tutorial: Rigging Squoosh 332

Gotchas 339

Secondaries 341

Chapter 14 A Shot in Production 347

Scene 1: Bartender 348

Scene 2: Lack of Dialogue 353

Scene 3: Dunce Cap 363

Scene 4: Salty Old Sea Captain 367

Scene 5: Pink or Blue? 370

Scene 6: Great Life 379

That’s All, Folks! 381

Index 383