# Facial Mocap rigging hierarchy?

**URL:** <https://blenderartists.org/t/facial-mocap-rigging-hierarchy/558858>\
**Category:** Animation and Rigging\
**Created:** [December 6, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/facial-mocap-rigging-hierarchy/558858 "2012-12-06T23:11:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ohsnapitsjoel](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ohsnapitsjoel/32/15298_2.png) [@ohsnapitsjoel](https://blenderartists.org/u/ohsnapitsjoel)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/facial-mocap-rigging-hierarchy/558858/1 "2012-12-06T23:11:30Z")

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Hi all, I’m delving into facial motion capture and the only snafu I’ve encountered so far is a rigging/parenting hierarchy when using Rigify-based rigs. So in a given scene I’ve got:  
-the tracking empties (no tracking constraints on them, they’ve been baked to f-curves) aligned with the control bones of the facial rig. In some cases, these bones are deformers themselves (like for the eyebrows, for instance).  
-the Rigify-based rig with a facial deformation setup.  
-All the facial rig control bones are parented to a _face root bone_, which is in turn parented to the Rigify ORG-Head bone.  
-Copy Location constraints on the control bones, targeting the tracking empties in World Space.

So what I was doing with a much simpler rig was parenting the control bones and the empties to a Head bone, then parenting the Head bone to a Head control bone. This way I was avoiding any cyclic dependencies.

But Rigify isn’t a terribly “simple” rig, and I just can’t wrap my head around how to avoid cyclic dependencies here. Please help! 🙂

I thought the description might be sufficient, but I can upload a .blend if necessary.

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**Author:** ![ohsnapitsjoel](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ohsnapitsjoel/32/15298_2.png) [@ohsnapitsjoel](https://blenderartists.org/u/ohsnapitsjoel)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 9:57am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/facial-mocap-rigging-hierarchy/558858/2 "2012-12-08T09:57:26Z")

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bumpity bump bump. i won’t do it again, i promise. 🙂 but does anyone have any ideas? come on, you master riggers whose brains are much more powerful than mine! 😃

i’m totally willing to post a workflow tutorial here (there aren’t a whole lot out there regarding how to do your own mocap for actual character animation) once i can get past this hump in the road. rigging just isn’t my strong suit, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to get as good at it as i would like.
