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David Higgins Animation...Copyright 2005 David Higgins and Frank Silas

Animation Lesson 5: Facial Acting by David Higgins 2005

This is a high level tutorial, not a step by step walk through.

If you can not act then use reference footage of a very good actor. Bringing a character to life is as much acting as it is animation. To make people believe he is alive you will need to study what makes a good performance believable!  A good exercise is to use a favourite scene from a movie and animate to it.

Recommended Reference Material:

  • "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa (written for Maya but the principals work for all applications)
  • Hash Siggraph 2003 CD's - Facial Animation by Frank Silas
  • "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard Williams

 

Like the body, the face is a complex piece of machinery yet the head, generally speaking only has 4 bones - the head, jaw and each eye.  Well you can't do too much facial animation with those.  So what controls (pose sliders) do you need?

Mouth controls, however, are not enough.  You need facial controls - eyes, cheeks, nose, ears, eyebrows etc etc.  You can build a 'standard' set but you will be far better off studying your reference footage and working out exactly what poses you need.

Study your reference footage.  Look at each part of the face and see how it moves.  Are they unique or do some movements of one part of the face also affect other parts of the face?   Lets look at the examples at left.  See how the eyebrow shape changes, notice the cheeks pinch up when angry.  See the importance of independent controls for each eye and the area around the eyes.  What you need to do is to isolate these shapes and emulate them in your character.

 

Now realise that you will generally be animating a character rather than a duplicate of the actor so when building your shapes don't be afraid to exaggerate them.  Since these controls are sliders you can always set the pose to a lesser value - you can't extend a pose beyond its set limits!

There may be some things that are just too small/subtle for you to see but you still need to consider them.  These include things like ear flapping and jiggling (particularly of the character has big ears).  Perhaps the character has a large jowl area - controls to provide basic animtion control are most desirable.

Now that you have identified all the facial movements build the controls.  Frank Silas' Facial Animation on the Hash Siggraph CD's cover this in detail. One point I would like to make about facial controls is remember that the facial expression has 3 dimensions to it.  It is very easy to forget about making adjustments in the Z axis! 

The range of controls used in this lesson are shown here.

Lets start animating.  Like the body I prefer to start with the large motion first.  In this case I scroll through the video and match the head movement/orientation to the video.  You'll see some subtle changes so you will need to reduce the default rotation snap from 5 down to 1 (and be prepared to manually enter smaller values).   Ignore the Jaw bone.  If you start keying in the Jaw bone you are going to make life difficult down the track when you come to do your lip synch.  If, however, there is no dialogue in the shot then by all means do the Jaw next.

DO NOT key every frame.  Key the 'peaks' of each movement only.  This will require that you scroll through the video a number of times but it is important to get these keys correct up front.

Now for the eyes.  Put in the keys for the primary eye movement.  Don't worry about the finessing yet (ie eye darts) just get in the basic eye direction.

Once you have completed this second pass, render it out and see how it reads.  Don't worry too much about 'matching' the roto.  Invariably the Character you are animating and the person in the video are very different.

So now you have the basic movements, next you need to put in the emotion.  Some animators like to build emotion poses for their characters - others just have an endless number of poses to control every muscle in the face.  It doesn't really matter just start at the beginning and work your way through the roto identifying and keying the main facial expressions - the emotion.  Start by putting keys at no less than 5 frame spacing.  You'll have the urge to key everything at this point - DON'T - it is too easy to very quickly end up with a twitching face.  At this point in time you may find that some of the inbetweens don't look good or expose underlying geometry.  Don't worry, you'll take care of that later. 

You'll be doing a lot of test renders and at this stage you just want to see that the large expressions read as well as they did in the video.  Don't be afraid to exaggerate or even hide certain expressions in your character so that it reads as well as your video actor.

OK, you have finished your first pass.  Now it's time to put is some of the smaller expression detail ie the subtle changes in the eye lids and eyebrows.  You are also ready to start putting in the basic mouth shapes.  Look at the extremes of the mouth shapes and key those.  Don't expect to find a single pose slider that will give you your mouth shape - you may need to use 2, 3, 4 or more.  Don't forget that once you use a pose slider you need to go back to the previous key and set the new pose to 0 (you may have to shift this key as you finesse the animation)

At this stage you are still matching the animation to the video.  In some cases the video acting will not be time to the final dialogue (ie some other voice actor may be doing the dialogue).  Don't worry about that yet - we'll worry about that when it's time to do the lip synch.

Keep finessing the animation to the video BUT DO NOT key every frame.  You still have to match the animation to the actual sound track and this will require moving keys!

Once you are happy with how the animation reads without the sound, load in the sound track and move it so that it starts with the first mouth shape keyframe.

One important thing to understand at this point is that the emotion in the face is often a direct result of what the actor is thinking and saying.  this means that when you need to move the mouth shape keys to match the dialogue YOU MUST also move ALL the facial keys.  If you have completed all the previous steps successfully then this lip synch phase will be very easy indeed.

Be careful at this stage.  If you have too many keys you may introduce a twitch when you move keys.  If this happens then start deleting keys and rework that part of the animation. Below are screenshots of the pose sliders. To see a test of facial animation done using this model and the outlined techniques click here David Higgins Animation.951kb movie file.

Angry - Emotion Pose

This is a whole of face pose useful for facial work without dialogue

Angry Eyes - Eye Pose

2 Pose Sliders - one for each eye.  Its a relatively subtle effect that can be used to indicate a concentrated or angry look by bringing the inside of the eyebrows down.

 

Blink Eyes - Eye Pose

2 Pose Sliders - one for each eye.

 

BMP Closed Droopy - Mouth Pose

This is a pose for the mouth shape associated with BM and P with an emotive undertone.

 

BMP Closed Narrow - Mouth Pose

This is a pose for the mouth shape associated with BM and P where a narrow mouth and puffy cheeks are required.

 

BMP Closed Wide - Mouth Pose

This is a pose for the mouth shape associated with BM and P with the default mouth/face width

 

Ecstatic - Emotion Pose

This is a scary pose!  Another emotion pose that can be used when no dialogue is required.

 

EE Wide Closed Teeth - Mouth Pose

Pose for the E mouth shape where the mouth is closed.  It can also be used as a grimace when combined with other face controls.

 

EE Wide Jaw Open - Mouth Pose

Pose for the E mouth shape where the mouth is open.  It can also be used as another version of a smile.

 

Exhausted - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose that can be used when no dialogue is required.  It could also be used to indicate other emotions such as depressed, dejected and sad.

 

Fear - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose that can be used when no dialogue is required.  Can be used to indicate other emotions such as horror and shock.

 

FV Narrow - Mouth Pose

Pose for the F or V mouth shape where the mouth is more relaxed or partway between other mouth shapes.

 

Love - Emotion Pose

This has to be the scariest pose of all!  An emotion pose that can be used when no dialogue is required.  Can be used to indicate other emotions such as 'In the wrong place at the wrong time'.

 

Natural Closed - Mouth Pose

Pose for a more natural closed mouth either in its own right or between Phonemes/Vismes.

 

Neutral - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose to wipe the grin off the characters face.  Note that some mouth poses rely on this control being reset to 0 (ie wide full grin)  These include SmileLeft and SmileRight.

 

OO Narrow - Mouth Pose

Pose for the OO mouth shape.  Can be used by itself but works well with the OONarrowPucker mouth shape to give a variety of shape variations.

 

OO Narrow Pucker - Mouth Pose

Pose for the OO mouth shape.  Can be used by itself but works well with the OONarrow mouth shape to give a variety of shape variations.

 

Phoneme A - Mouth Pose

Pose for the A mouth shape.  Can be used by itself but works well with other mouth shapes to give a variety of shape variations.

 

Phoneme BMP - Mouth Pose

Pose for the BMP mouth shape.  Can be used by itself but works well with other mouth shapes to give a variety of shape variations.  Can also be used to pose the mouth for a stern closed shape.

 

Phoneme E - Mouth Pose

Pose for the E mouth shape.  This is a nice in between mouth shape from the previous 2 EE shapes

 

Phoneme FV - Mouth Pose

Pose for the FV mouth shape.  This is a natural wide FV mouth shape.

 

Phoneme O - Mouth Pose

Pose for the O mouth shape.  Can be used as a Phoneme shape but also useful for the mouth shape when whistling.

 

Phoneme CDGKNRSYZ - Mouth Pose

Pose for the CDGKNRSYZ mouth shape.

 

Phoneme Sh - Mouth Pose

Pose for the Sh, Ch mouth shape.

 

Phoneme Th - Mouth Pose

Pose for the Th mouth shape. 

 

Phoneme U - Mouth Pose

Pose for the U mouth shape such as the Y in You.

 

Phoneme WQ - Mouth Pose

Pose for the WQ mouth shape and is a variation on the OO mouth poses.

 

Poke Tongue - Mouth Pose

This pose can't really be used with any other mouth poses and simply provides the ability to have the character poke his tongue out.

 

Pout - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose giving the character a nice Pout.  Can also be used to indicate other emotions such as Thinking/Pondering.

 

Pucker Nose - Nose, Cheek and Upper Lip Pose

This pose can be combined with other poses to indicate such emotions as 'Yuk' or disgust or the expression associated with an incredulous 'What?'

 

Left Brow Raise - Eyebrow Pose

This control simply pulls the left eyebrow up.  Combined with other poses this allows you to do very expressive eye poses

 

Right Brow Raise - Eyebrow Pose

This control simply pulls the right eyebrow up.  Combined with other poses this allows you to do very expressive eye poses

 

Relax Centre Eyebrow - Eyebrow Pose

This control pulls up on and relaxes the centre of the eyebrows.

 

Sad/Hurt - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose giving the character a sad/hurt look when there is no dialogue.

 

Smile Left - Mouth Pose

This control requires that the Grin2Neutral pose be reset to 0.  It simply relaxes the opposite side of the face and puts a smile shape on the cheek.

 

Smile Right - Mouth Pose

This control requires that the Grin2Neutral pose be reset to 0.  It simply relaxes the opposite side of the face and puts a smile shape on the cheek.

 

Sneer Left - Mouth Pose

Ideally this control should be used when the Grin2Neutral pose is reset to 0.  It puts a sneer on the left side of the mouth.

 

Sneer Right - Mouth Pose

Ideally this control should be used when the Grin2Neutral pose is reset to 0.  It puts a sneer on the right side of the mouth.

 

Stretch and Squash - Body Pose

This slider varies from -100 to 100.  -100 is squashed while 100 is stretched.

 

Suprised - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose giving the character a surprised or shocked look when there is no dialogue.

 

Suspicious - Emotion Pose

An emotion pose giving the character a suspicious or perplexed look when there is no dialogue.  The emotion can also be used to indicate Stunned or mildly shocked.

 
 by David Higgins
 Copyright 2005 David Higgins and Frank Silas