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Hey there jaebea!
When it comes to body rigging I am following a series of free tutorials that so far were awesome.
What I´m looking for is joint based facial rigging and so far i have not found any free tutorials that would be close to what I need which in the case of G2F is rather realistic female face geometry.
As I´ve mentioned the only thing that comes close is a tutorial from digital tutors but not free - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35227V8rxmE
Right now I am trying to create a joint based eyelid. Not the easiest thing to do : D If the eye in the end really blinks, I´m gonna throw a party : D
Toyen,
Controllers are those circles and squares AKA the control rig.
for the roll slots, you need to read the manual for that.
You don't want to export it any higher res that it is now its too high as is. If you want to look smoother, right before you render, select the model and hit the "2" key to enable Subdividing. When you want to work on it again hit the 1 key to turn it off.
And remember the HumanIK is for making Humans that do Human things. If you guys are trying to add extra arms and legs or something, you will need to learn all about rigging a character. That is no small task thats for sure. Hell I don't even know all that stuff lol
Toyen, why don't you try one of the automated ones. Here are a few free ones that I have found:
http://evancox.net/project/reusable-facial-rig/
http://www.supercrumbly.com/3d.php?sid=209#.VKYMxCvF9s5 (oops, this one isn't free)
Edit: I was originally using G1 instead of G2. I went back to G1 to look at her blend shapes and they actually move better than G2. G1 also doesn't seem to be as much of a resource hog as G2. Maybe I will use her blend shapes AND bone-rig her face. That way I will have more control. IDK, I will just have to see. I am very much a noob so I still don't know what I am talking about...lol
I will have to watch that DT tut you mentioned above. I have a subscription to DT and Lynda so they are available to me.
That looks unweildy, but I don't know the rest of the setup there.
Take a gander at Maya's docs, deformers in particular. It's uncommon to have a good rig that uses only bones. For the eyelids, you could instead use the wire tool to similar effect, with less clutter. As a bonus you could easily add extra wires to handle eyelid roll/wrinkle. (and then write some controllers so you don't need to touch the curve/wire tool in the end.)
Other things you may want to look in to are Clusters, Expressions and Driven Keys.
I second that, the manual has more info then you think. Deformers are way more flexible then using bones for the face.
Hey Jeabea,
Before you do to much extra rigging, check that the blend shapes don't conflict with new things you add to the model. I had issues with altering the geometry and when I used the slider on one of the blend shapes, it reverted the geometry back to its original state. In others words it unaltered what I altered.
Soul, how do I do that? "Inquiring noobs want to know" Haha! Luckily, I never work from my original model. If I am going to change something, I will create a new file so if I screw it up....and I certainly have....I can start over.
Well lets say I imported a model into maya and I wanted to make some modifications to the face that I couldn't do in Daz. So I start smoothing out the eyes with the sculpting tool or I pull the lips down or something to better match the actor I'm trying to mimic. Well when I slide any of the blend shapes all my changes will revert back to the way they were. I just wanted to let you know before you did something like that.
As far as a work around.....I have yet to discover a solution to that problem.
So before you add all those extra facial rigging you might want to check that the blend shapes don't screw it up for you.
OK, I understand. Maybe I should try a couple then see what happens. I will try that tomorrow (or later on today).
Well, the first time I tried to add the face joints and because I didn't know any better, I didn't detach the skin from the skeleton. I should have tried to just un-skin it with my new joints in place but I didn't. I deleted everything and started over. Went through the whole process again, went to re-skin and my mesh kept disappearing. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong so for now, that is on the back burner until I can learn a little more about the process. I will use the current blendshapes. I am going to see if I can edit any of them. There are a few that need to be a little stronger. Some can be adjusted by increasing their number value but others don't respond.
Several hours later:
But, maybe the answer lies in editing the blendshape in DS before they are exported. Looking into that right now!!
The person who started this thread was asking about the jaw and the blend shapes. I have noticed this too. The jaw does not move with the mouth mesh. Soul, do you have the answer to this?
You'd need to also move the bone for the mouth. For example, in Daz Studio, the pose control "Mouth Open Wide" has a morph, but it also rotates the lower jaw bone.
But in DS, it does it automatically. In Maya, I do have to move that bone separately..... and it will go right through the mesh! Doesn't that somehow mean that jawbone is not skinned? Other bones stay in place but that one doesn't! It's parented to the head which seems to be the only reason it moves with the body. This could also affect my use of Faceshift if that jawbone doesn't move. Luckily, the animation that I am working on only requires facial expressions but I will definiately want to look into this issue once I actually know what I'm doing!
That's where the advanced parts of rigs come into play, the jaw is weighted to the jawbone (skinned, as you say). In many of the face rigs that you see, those control boxes you see in the viewport can be driving multiple morphs/deformers/bones/whatever at once. I've never gone that far down the animation route, so I couldn't tell you much more than that. But the basic idea is to mimic the way that DS does it; one slider that does two things in this case: move the mouth open morph from 0-1, and also rotate the jawbone by an appropriate amount. It may be as simple as setting those both in the same Driven Key.
I'm converting daz/poser content to Maya asset from about 3 Year and work on Maya for more than 10.
My typical pipeline is this:
1) Create the character I need in DAZ |Studio
2) Export it and the needed morph by using .FBX format
3) Import the character in Maya, removing the deform mesh but keep the blend shape
4) Recreate all the shader by hand for my render engine
5) Rig the body by using human IK or Rapid Rig: Modular (http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/news/software/c/rapid-rig-modular-for-maya-a-new-procedural-rigging-toolset)
6) Hand create the facial ring by using clusters deformer and the extracted blend shape from Daz/Studio
7) Convert the geo hair in to curve hair manually or by using GMH 2(http://3docean.net/item/gmh2-hair-script/6979012)
This is not simple task and need a good knowledge of Maya, but the result are outstanding.
NB: Jawbone is skinning only in Genesis 2 and Dawn
Wow. Davide, that is a big undertaking! I have only been in Maya for a handful of months so some of those things are way over my head. I am using Mental Ray so the the textures I am using work fine with it. Also, I did purchase GMH2 for the hair. I can't wait to try it!!
Last night, in my ignorance, I used wrong terms while talking about the jaw. I should have said that the teeth don't move with the mouth. Doing a little more research, I found that the lower teeth will move with the lower jaw by way of a set driven key. I have some really specific instructions on how to do this for those who are clueless like me:
https://books.google.com/books?id=7KV9TiCgsHQC&pg=SA3-PA6&lpg=SA3-PA6&dq=set+driven+key+maya+teeth&source=bl&ots=09-JgkUXJF&sig=ZAKqvir9mEGo9rp6j-hFoAYMwXA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OOOsVKL9E4ayoQSxq4HwCA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=set driven key maya teeth&f=false
It's really good stuff!
Im sorry jeabea, for some reason I stopped getting notifications of new posts. The one draw back to dae is the jaw bone won't move with the blend shapes. It used to work when you export with FBX but Maya will crash if you import and FBX with morphs (blend shapes) at least it does for me.
You have to add a controller for the jaw bone and move it at the same time as the blend shapes. Its very hard to select the jawbone joint because its almost on top of another joint.
To make the blend shapes stronger or affect the model more. simple type a higher or lower number in the bland shape and you'll increase the range of the slider. example type -1 or 2
I tried to add a set driven key to the teeth (jawbone) but the blendshapes are all included in the mesh. Even if I select the individual blendshape in the outliner, it doesn't show up in the set driven key window. I will play more with that later. The animation I am working on only requires facial expressions. For now, I can deal with moving the jawbone separately.
I imported my character as an fbx again and, yes, the teeth move with the blendshapes BUT, the main reason I am using the collada is because of what Mental Ray does with the texture. Below is both an fbx and a collada rendered with Mental Ray. The fbx is on the left. I tried tweeking it and playing with the settings with no luck. I would have to use different eyelash map that I had generated with Photoshop. The collada on the right, I didn't have to do anything with. She renders beautifully right "out of the box"!
Wow your lucky, when I import an FBX with morphs in it, Maya crashes instantly. The texture issue the fault of the Daz FBX plug-in. a few years ago when I got the chance to email the guy in charge of developing the plug-in, I asked him to change it. He said he would but.....
Basically what is wrong with it is the shaders come in as Phong shaders and reflectivity jacked up. To fix the eyelashes simply break the connection to the color channel of the eyelash shader.
but about the jaw bone, just make a circular curve shape, snap it to the joints center, freeze transformations on the curve and assign an Orient constraint and you have a Jaw controller that you can grab on to.
With a little help from an unexpected source, I have been able to place a set driven key on six of the blend shapes that needed the jaw/teeth to follow. Works perfectly. I now have a complete working Genesis model in Maya fully rigged with IK and FK and a control rig for applying outside animation/mocap. I want to add the eye follow control then I will begin work on converting the Akaste hair model to dynamic with the help of the the GMH2 plugin. Then onto the clothing.
On to Clothing? You mean you imported the figure naked without clothes?
The animation I am working on requires several clothing changes. I will import the clothing over the same way, as collada then convert to ncloth. There is a video on YouTube on how to refine the fit, convert and working with it in animation as dynamic.
But sense you will not want ALL of your clothing dynamic like shoes, pants etc. I would suggest you add ALL of the clothing you plan on using to the genesis figure and when you export it check the " Merge Skeletons" box. After importing into Maya, select each outfit and assign it to a display layer so you can hide the clothing you don't want to use.
If you import the clothing separately, you'll have to skin the clothing onto the figure.
Is the video you found using "Daz" exported clothing or just generic clothing? I ask because Daz clothing has super high ploys and will likely grind your computer to a slow crawl when you convert it to nCloth. And you'll lose the UV's
You are right about the misc stuff like shoes and pants. I will remember that. Genny is just my test model that I can experiment on.
The dress was just one that the guy modeled and put on his figure. Isn't there something in Maya that will reduce the poly count?
Yes you can use "Clean up...." and then "reduce" you'll have to experiment on the percentage you use. You'll also have to convert the ploys to quads. Which could screw up your UV maps right there. You'll really have to read the manual on that stuff. But if you discover a way to convert the dress without losing your UV maps, please let me know. Losing those UV maps is the biggest problem.
I tried making something an nCloth from Daz once........once. :-)
Maya had a fit, 22GB of ram completely full. I had to force quit Maya
omg, that's awful!!! I may have to re-think some things!
You can give it a shot but you'll have to get those polys down.
If you want dynamic hair, you should look into nHair it works really well and it has a smooth interactive workflow.
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOk5Lpg9KGY
I bought a plugin that converts poly hair to dynamic. I will be posting result. I have hundreds of hair models I have collected over the past 15 years so if I can utilize them, I will.
Hey there guys and nice result there Davide!
I´m currently trying to put together a SSS skin shader in maya.
Whats up with the jaw? I havent noticed anything wrong when I was trying to animate it, it opened and closed as I expected.