https://www.mediafire.com/file/pobafkaq2h0vzwz/me48.rar/file
Still trying to rig the eyebrow of my model. It’s fine but the face keeps clipping. I got the middle working the the one near the nose is struggling to move without clipping
Just in general, if you aren’t already, I’d advise weight-painting with your armature in as extreme a pose as you expect to want–my characters usually look like horribly contorted marionettes or looney tunes in the middle of a smear frame while I’m smoothing out problem areas–so you can confirm you’re getting the results you want as you paint. And whenever possible keep things symmetrical, and named accordingly.
[Maybe because the character is facing away from front, it looks like your R and L suffixes are backwards right now–but I don’t think Blender cares about that as long as the two are on opposite sides of 0 on the X axis. What the program does need, at least on my version Blender, is for the side labels to be the last characters aside from numbers and punctuation in a bone name. So you’ll need to check out the Batch Rename tool to use once you’ve selected the left side bones to replace _R_ with _ and add a suffix of .L (or .R if you like the backwardness) and then do the same on the right. Nice thing is that when a bone name changes and an object is connected via armature modifier, the bone name is automatically updated in the object’s vertex group names.]
When a mesh object is symmetrical, you can just paint one side with the setting to mirror vertex groups turned on – and that means you could do the broken pose with one eyebrow raised and one furrowed and refine both expressions at once to get a happy medium.
So I saw in your first post about this that you said you tried data transfer and it didn’t work. You could possibly get better results if, once you’re happy with the weights on the face object, you made a duplicate of it and cut away the parts you don’t want to effect the eyebrows and maybe even move flatten and move some parts close to them, like those eyesockets the eyebrows are sitting so far in front of…but it’s probably also just better to handpaint anyway with the meshes as-is.
Even with perfectly matched weights, they may still have some issues just because there’s more geometry on the eyebrows than the face–so the face will naturally move something and end up with a straight line where a soft falloff would have the eyebrow trying to make a curve and thereby clipping.
^ That’s 4 loop cut opportunities for bending in the middle of what the face mesh thinks should be one triangle.
So the ways to get your eyebrows here to match the weights of the face once you’ve got it working would be to rebuild them by duplicating and extruding faces and edges directly from the face. If the face doesn’t have enough geometry to do the smooth shapes you want with the eyebrows, you may have to add it there first.
it’s backwards because when the model is exported from the game it’s backwards so I use mirror to flip it to the correct side. It didnt seem to make a difference to me
As for the eyebrows I had to use subdivide, the one in the tabs not the modifier. The subdivide modifier deformed the eyebrows so I had to use the other version. It seemed to have helped
but the problem is the eyebrows just clip into the face. Fixing that is my top priority. I dont care about the other stuff. They work fine and I dont see why I need to make it symmetrical. I don’t care about that. It works fine, the bones move fine. I don’t want to do extra stuff when all I want is to get the eyebrows working. I feel like it’s pointless extra work
It’s just these eyebrows and face clipping when they move is the problem.
The data transfer doesn’t make a difference. It’s just the same thing im doing currently just worse.
I fiddled with it yesterday. I managed to make the middle work. However it looks a little sloppy cause it makes a lump on the forehead when it goes up and I would like to smooth that out to make it natural.
The bottom corner of the eyebrow is now a big problem due to it instantly clipping in the the face from the slightest movement
The symmetry was just advice for setting things up so you only have to do all the work once, rather than finally solve everything on the right eyebrow and then get to do it all again, besides the benefits of getting to see the effects on two different expressions at once by weight painting with a pose. But right now at least on the version I downloaded, the left side of the face has fewer bones and doesn’t react to what is there. Just so you don’t have to keep painting back and forth between objects, I recommend you get the face weights painted first and then deal with making the eyebrows work on top…but they might just not work unless you either:
- Make the eyebrows and the face the same level of complexity so they can move together or
- Add a layer of child bones that are what the eyebrows are actually following (so you don’t have to redo the weights you can just rename the relevant vertex groups on the eyebrow object after the new bones you make by duplicating the ones you have already) that you can move a little bit after moving their parents–so you’re only moving the eyebrows forward on the poses where they need to be forward in order to not clip.
The child bones would need to be parented but disconnected from the current eyebrow bones and, for organization’s sake, you’d want those child bones to be in their own group that’s normally not visible but easy to solo so you can just mess with the eyebrows separate from the facebrows.
what do you mean by same level of complexity?
Okay. So it’s not just complexity (amount of geometric detail) but also whether it’s offset.
I pointed out before that the eyebrows have more geometry than the face you’re wanting them to follow and not clip through. As you weight paint them you’re probably wanting to use that geometry to get nicer, smooth transitions between bone influences. Having that smooth interpolation on top won’t work with the simpler lines below on the face–every vertex will move its end of an edge and that edge will remain a straight line to its neighbor.
So even when you have more details on the eyebrows you kind of have to ignore them in weightpainting and replicate the linear relationships between points below them. Here I did that by just duplicating the simple linear line and adding subdivision to the segments; even with uneven spacing by deleting some points it works as long as they’re still a linear interpolation between weights as you move along the edge between the corresponding vertices on the simpler mesh.
So it’s not a nice smooth shape to the eyebrow but it’s not clipping! The catch is that you can’t get that perfect match and no clipping if you don’t have matching vertices to the ones that do exist on the simpler mesh.
I made that the same way as the orange line above but went ahead and deleted the original three points after my random subdivision. So even though what’s there matches the linear interpolation, it’s not enough without the exact corresponding points.
In my estimation, that’s another reason to get the weights set up on the face mesh first and then rebuild the eyebrows by duplicating some of the face geometry, where you’ll only have to do extrusions, loop cuts, and very minor movement of the vertices to get the shape you want with the weights already built in.
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then how do I add more vertices to the face with it deforming? I try subdivide and it shrivels up. It becomes completely deformed. So I couldn’t do that and had to work with what I have.
You can add cuts and select vertices to “join” with J which adds a sequence of edges between them; you can also select those new vertices/edges which will naturally be inside the implied curve of the mesh since they’re cut in and hit Alt+S to “shrink and grow” and type in a tiny decimal number to move them outward on their normals. The Loop Tools add-on that ships with blender has a relax option that will work on selected edge loops, making them smoother in a fairly controlled way.
Behold, a rambling walk through of how I’d approach it:
oof uhhh the thing is the eyebrows are supposed to be that way. The only reason they curl when I move them up is because that’s how the expressions are
so remaking them and curling them like that is going against what im trying to achieve.
HOWEVER your method somewhat reminds me of someone else’s model from the same game. They somehow combined the eyebrow mesh with the face. It was able to have a serious expression but change to look different with bones and they managed to achieve the dragon ball expressions perfectly.
Copying their work is probably my best bet. Problem is I got no idea how they did it.I decompiled it so I can look at it in blender and see their work and its how I discovered the meshes were stitched together. I have no idea how they did it
I could share the mesh and maybe you can tell me?
Yes, I did not continue on to do the cuts and extrusions to get that angled shape out of the duplicated chunk of brow bone, just told you the operations you could use that would keep the weights intact.
But also yes, having fewer meshes will be way easier to weight paint in a way that won’t clip into each other because there won’t be skin under the eyebrows. So as long as the eyebrows don’t need to separate/pop off to exaggerate an expression like in some cartoons, that’s a great plan!
I’m probably not going to be much help with specifics. But since you’re attaching two meshes it’ll be good reference for you to look up boolean cleanup–there are a ton of articles and videos about it on youtube because every situation is unique. You probably don’t have to worry about making it compatible with subdivision so there are some things like supporting edge loops that you wouldn’t necessarily need, but they also start with matching up numbers of vertices and those subd goals for a mesh (keeping your polys close to squares with clean edge flow) will also help your animated deformation.
Just as an example, here’s one smooth geometric shape joining a sphere (kinda abstractly similar to sloped eyebrows joining a face):
Best of luck in your research!
well this is the result i’m trying to get. Notice how they not only got the eyebrows to move properly but even the eyelids move correctly. Allowing you to go from a serious expression to a joyful one. It’s EXACTLY what i’m trying to do. They’re from the same game. This one is gohan. So I know it’s not impossible to get the desired level of expressiveness
https://www.mediafire.com/file/q5t4klfsp40y028/gohanexample.blend/file
i’m starting to think no one knows
You need to look at creating shape-keys, which allow you to change many different types of expressions including Visems for lip-sync work, etc.
Tons of videos on YouTube… like this…
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I know about shapekeys but I was saving them as a last resort.
I’m sorry I haven’t read the whole topic… but I understand the 2D to 3D Character Design Adaptation issue.
This is pretty complicated to solve in CG because it’s a special case of 2D Expression which requires specialized on-demand interactions in the 3D Facial Rig involving the Eye, the Top Eyelid, the Top Lid Crease, the Eyebrow an the Muscles/Skin on the upper region of the Eye (e.g., Orbicularis Occuli, Forehead…).
I’ve made the following thread recently, some folks gave some insights, then I was able to come up with a partial solution in the end, which might not do 100% the trick, but perhaps about 75%, and, most importantly, it prevented some of the Shrinkwrapping Artifacts I was having because of my primordial Setup. Basically, instead of using Shrinkwrap Modifier for the Eyebrows Mesh Object, have it use Shrinkwrap Bone Constraints for its respective Control Bones.
Maybe that will help.
What would this do exactly?
It’s precisely the kind of 2D Expression that Cartoons like Dragon Ball’s Goku (left side of the image you’ve shared before) is having.
Btw, if it wasn’t clear, at the very end of that thread I’ve linked, there is a clip I’ve recorded which shows something; but below I’m udpating with more information:
The Skin Meshes located above the Eye and above the Top Eyelid and above the Top Lid Crease as well (Orbicularis Occuli & Forehead) must Move radically downward, from their original Positions, and meet the Eye and actually shape its appearance from the top. This Posing might mean Pushing or Compressing the Mesh elements in that Region. Although usually quite expressive on its own, the Eyebrow should be understood as a secondary element in relation to that Skin that is Moving so much; the Expression is much better in principle, when the Skin Moves/Deforms a lot, so not just the Eyebrow. It doesn’t really matter much how the Eyebrow will reach the correct Pose (if it is following the Skin perfectly or not) , but it does matter a lot if the Skin is doing it’s job. This should be why, btw, Shape Keys can solve this quite well as it was already proposed here; but it is perfectly achievable with a pure Armature Deform solution; in this case, I’m using Bendy Bones.
Here is 3D Character evidence:
that solution isn’t going to work. This model is being ported to a completely different software that doesn’t support this kind of thing, which is why im using bones to do it manually. I’ve seen it done before so I know it’s possible. Its on a model from the same game mine is from. I dont know how they did it but I decompiled it to get a look but they did something that I have zero idea how they did it.
I got it right here so you can look and you tell me how they did it. They got the eye lids and eyebrows to move EXACTLY how I want them to. But I got no clue how they did it. They somehow fused the two meshes perfectly and got this result but I have no idea how they did it and I cant ask them either cause I got no way to do so and even if I did I doubt he would of answered
https://www.mediafire.com/file/q5t4klfsp40y028/gohanexample.blend/file
Bro, that approach in the file (at least the way it appears there) is the crudest ‘oldschool’ Advanced Organic Rigging technique ever!
Though it’s ok if you don’t know about it yet. One fact is there is just not much content that will teach nor explain riggers exactly how to achieve this kind of Setup. Because there are better methods today, and because it can also be incredibly tedious.
Where this tends to be good is for improved versatility in the case of Exporting projects; but nowadays even Bendy Bones can be ‘Converted’ to Regular Bones with a special approach.
Anyways, what they are using in the file, is what I call a ‘Legion of Regular Deform Bones’.
And in this Face Mesh, there isn’t even as many as it could have.
But for 3D Animation, they usually require to behave in an Automated way such as in a ‘Proportional Posing’ way on Pose Mode; this concept is akin to the Proportional Editing Option on Edit Mode, but since there is currently no ‘Proportional Posing’ in Blender, we can assume it is the task of the rigger to recreate this kind of Setup for the Skeleton, in principle with Bone Constrainst and/or Drivers. And that is but an Intermediate Rigging technique.
Now, you need to pay attention: as the file has NO Bone Constraints and NO Drivers whatsoever for those Deform Bones. The only Relation is occasional Parenting (Offset/Disconnected); this is extremely limited way of doing Proportional Posing, since the Parenting Relation will uniquely respond to 100% of Transforms (no control over Influence nor other varying factors over time). There is just not good enough Automation possibilities which can be done through Bone Parenting alone that I know, although for sure the 3D Animators can solve the problem on their own --paying the price for a pretty limiting Rig!
Thus, it might be the case, that the game-makers have made an Automated Proportional Posing Setup, but from another CG software, maybe directly in the Game Engine (because some Game Engines have their own Rigging solutions). Or, in that game case, because of lacking of resources perhaps, they hyst figured out that the animators could just handle the annoying task of making the Expressive Actions for the 3D Character without relying on any more carefully developed Proportional Posing Setup besides the crude Parenting Relation.
Even without knowing the whole truth, this is the big picture.
I’ve made that Proportional Posing Automation content, although you can find other example in the Generated Rig of the Face of the Basic Human Meta-Rig of Rigify Addon/Extension. The tutorial here is for Eyelids Rig, but the same (Proportional Posing Automation) concept can be applied to Orbicularis Occuli Rig, Eyebrows Rig, Forehead Rig, etc; of course, without a specific guide, that would require a bit of exploration and creativity from the part of the rigger. Just to note: it doesn’t matter if the Setup is made with B-Bones (as these can use extra TWK/Tweaker Bones) or a Legion of Regular Deform Bones.
This tutorial of course can’t include all Proportional Posing Automation possibilities. There exist many ways to achieve similar results; so this is just a few samples for Blender.
Hope that helps.
im talking about the mesh. Did you look at what they did to the eyebrows? How they did the weight paint?
Merging the two meshes seemed to really work out for them. It’s not just proportional editing, they did something with the mesh too.
edit: also I dont even know if proportional edits will follow into sfm