Facial Controls

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi…how do i set up facial controls in blender. im a 3ds max user who has jumped ship and started using blender, so i know how to do it, i just dont know how in blender.

basically, i want to set up a joystick like set of controls.

watch a video on my site to see what im after.

thanks to any helpers!

LB

2

I think you might be looking for driven shape keys.

3

thanks orinoco :yes:

that is exactly what i was after!

my biggest problem is not knowing what Blender calls things im trying to do. i was poking about and found a page on the elephants dream pages about driven shape keys, and i think i want them in a seperate window like the screenshot they have. is this easy?

http://orange.blender.org/blog/licence-to-drive

cheers

LB

4

i think i want them in a seperate window like the screenshot

The controls and character are all in the same scene; the viewports are just arranged differently. Create the shape driver controls off to the side somewhere out of camera range. Create a new viewport (window) by right-clicking on the pane divider. Pan (shift MMB) and zoom (mouse wheel) the new viewport until the controls fit. You can lock the view on an object from the View menu -> View Properties.

5

It’s easy. I suspect in the elephant’s dream image the controls are simply off to one side of the model, or maybe above it, and one of the 3D windows is centered on the model, the other on the controls. They are probably on a different layer, as well, so you can turn off the layer when rendering.

6

thanks both of you.

i say the ludwig rig wich has custom controls parented to the head so it follows the caracter around but this is fiddly as you need to zoom in and out to animate.

sweet, didnt even think about doing it out of shot and centering another view over it. the simple soloutions are the best!

LB