I’ve had this project going for a while; the premise is to closely recreate the CG style of the Spongebob Squarepants movie “Sponge On The Run”
I’ve had a strong liking to this animation style since I first saw the reveal, so as a passion project+portfolio piece, I wanted to take the task of recreating it as closely as I could to the source material
Model wise, I know what I’m doing, but the unique style of rigging they have is something I am baffled by, and moreso confused by.
Where do I start when it comes to rigging a face like this? I’ve look at references for rigs made similarly, such as the recent Sprite Fright rigs, but even still, I have a difficult time breaking those down.
Any help on this topic, and where to start, would be such an appreciated gesture.
(I’d give references of what I want to do, but I can’t upload more than one image.)
Hum, it really depends on how far you want to go with it…
Or, how much time you’re willing to spend.
For the actual show, there were probably a small team doing R&D for a few mouths to see how far they can go with rigging before doing the actual work.
So yes, it’s a lot of work done by expert, hard to compete with that… That doesn’t mean you can’t do something cool nonetheless.
1/
I’d first start by doing doodles , what kind of shape you want to do with the mouth , the eyes, the body/face … This is how I approach complex rigs.
While doing this , I ask myself what kind of setup would do this particular shape… I try to draw the bones on top of the drawing , how they rotate, or what shape key I need to do.
It helps me a lot to start by drawing, even if I don’t draw really well. And even if sometime that mean re-drawing an actual reference. It’s a good first step …
Ask yourself what technique is best for a particular case : bone, shapekey, lattice, meshdeform, a combination of those ? What’s the pro and cons…
What kind of topology is needed for a particular set of shapes. Do you have enough points on the mesh, will that work ?
That way, even before opening blender, you’re already doing some tests and experiments, that are quite fast because you don’t need to really build it to see if that can work or not.
2/
Then if it’s still a bit fuzzy, I’ll do some test rigs. You can for example make a simple scene with only one eye, and see if you manage to do what you’ve planned in your doodles.
Then I integrate that technique in the final rig, with proper bones names, and a better/complete setup.
3/
The final rig will probably involve some layered deformation, like the mesh has one (or multiple) lattices, that are deformed by the rig, and the rig deform the whole character. Make sure that you are at ease with these kind of setup (at least on a test scene).
Another common technique that is quite tedious is mesh switching. Like in the Peanuts movie.
Different mesh, with different bone setup, allow extreme deformations, but I’d try to avoid that on the face unless you’re reeaaallly motivated. But At least that can help for smaller things like the teeth.
4/
You’ll probably end up spending like 70/80% of your time doing research and tests on simplified cases, and 30/20% actually rigging the character, especially if you’re looking for something advanced.
5/
Bear in mind that’s just a rig, you can probably rig it like a regular character and give it to a talented animator, and he’ll be able to make funny and cartoony animation with it.
But yeah, it’s great if you add more feature with cool deformations, obviously the animation will be better and more extreme.
But unless you’re willing to spend 6/10 month making an ultra advanced, blockbuster feature film rig, you’ll have to leave some feature behind and make a simpler version than what’s on the movie.
6/
Do some tests, start with what you already know and add features on top of it. Don’t be scared to redo stuff, it’s ok , especially if you have time and motivation, to start with a simple version and improve it, or redo it as you progress. That’s how you end-up with a great product. I’m sure in the movie the rig has gone through many versions and experimentation . It’s not something you pull out in one go just like that.
Good luck ! it’s really an interesting subject to work on !
This is a wonderful outlook on it, thank you for your input, this is what I needed to hear!
I’ve just seen a few Sponge Bob animations on that animated movie.
Although it’s not very clear to me how that Rig was done and how it was meant to be animated, I’ve caught the following notions:
They kinda treat the facial expressions (I’ll be focusing mostly on the Mouth expressions/shapes) as if they were 2D cutout animation shapes that swap between themselves in a relatively abrupt way. It’s beautiful because, additionally to this abrupt, non-fluid swapping frames, they also seem to be trying to simulate around an economic 12 frames/second 2D Animation standard (instead of the regular cinema 24 frames/second (or even higher frequencies, which are often used on CG and Gaming).
By visualizing this mini extract (a few seconds on that mouth expression):
…that very complex mouth shape isn’t changing a lot, but even when it receives minor tweaks in the expression itself, it’s not always a fluid motion, it is as much as if it were a swapping of different cutout shapes on that same shape theme (it might not be most optimal solution, but, yes, a certain small number of those minor variations could BE extra Shape Keys done for the Pose Library, as if they were variations of a main Shape Key expression); some other minor tweaks one might just pose the mesh manually if the Mouth has Bones with Weight Paint, but depending on the the amount and complexity of variations one need, if you can be creative enough only with Shape Keys, then it might not even be necessary to work with Bones and Weight Paint for the Mouth… as this usually makes things way more complicated, although it offers more freedom for occasional desired tweaks).
What I would attempt, is to create a large Pose Library of Mouth Shape Keys. Treating each Shape Key as if it were an “animation cutout frame/image”. I might have a collection of “animation cutout frame/image” (extra Shape Keys, all saved to the Pose Library) even for a single expression like that crying one on the video, which actually is a combination of… say, about 5 mouth poses that are occasionally swapping between themselves according to the animator’s creativity on the timing, and the rest is just minor and very subtle interpolation, that are taking only fractions of a second.
One of the real problems here, however, might not be so much in the Rigging, but in the Animation: It’s How do you animate this character, by switching the mouth poses in the Pose Library (in my attempt, that would be: using Shape Keys as if they were 2D cutout frames in the Pose Library) in a way that the automatic interpolation (that should happen naturally on the 3D software) between those poses (when I put them on a time sequence, as key-frames on the Dope Sheet Editor), doesn’t destroy my non-fluid animation goal?
I don’t know yet how to solve this in Blender, but I bet there are effective ways to do so. As a former 2D animator, this is a solution that intrigues me.
But you wouldn’t solve this, by simply setting your timeline Frequency (fps) to 12 fps. What you need, is to have a deep control on the timing that automatically arise on the time in-between the swapping Mouth Shapes (or Shape Keys in case you adopt Shape Keys) from the Pose Library. Ideally, the animation should barely flow between the swappings; it’s really as if there should be nearly NO INTERPOLATION at all (or just a very, VERY TINY amount of interpolation. Surely, this could be manually done on the Dope Sheet Editor… with tons of work on the Key Frames I guess. but I believe there would be more automatic ways to deal with that.
PS: If you’re using Shape Keys, just remember you need to Apply the Mirror Modifier before creating any Shape Keys on the character; otherwise, you can’t Apply that modifier, and you’ll be stuck.
¡Good luck!
Awesome !
It’s really a great subject to work on, I’m sure you’ll learn a ton of cool tricks along the way !
as @Pxy-Gnomes pointed out , once the rig is done there is obviously a strong pose library made that helps having shapes that are consistent through the movie.
The awesome animation and animation style on top of it really blends all that.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by looking at the final animation, but once you’ll start getting into it, things will start to get clearer as you’ll solve one problem at a time, ending with a great rig that will blow some mind !
Feel free to poke me if you post some progress or are stuck on a specific issue !