Is it possible to create facial animations for my lego man model using images rather than try and model the mouth and eyes (which I have tried and failed). Ideally I would like to use gimp to create seperate images (or an animated gif) and then apply as a texture to my model which I can animate using lpo curves. Any tips on how to do this and the pros and cons doing this type of facial animation much apprecated.
Sorry if I have asked a question that has been answered before :rolleyes:
I did try and search the forum first!
Hmm, I don’t know of a way to do that, but I’m not the most experienced Blender user by a long shot. It sounds real messy to me.
What kind of eyes are you trying to model? An eyeball+pupil is pretty simple, two spheres, then join them as one mesh or parent them. If you want ‘Pixar Eyes’ there is in fact a tutorial named ‘Modelling Pixar Eyes’ in the Noob-To-Pro wiki.
A mouth shouldn’t be that hard either, just cut a hole in the mesh, then animate the mouth with Shape keys (do you know about Shape keys?)
Otherwise what about the mouth is giving you difficulty?
I’ve wondered the same thing and in theory, it’s pretty simple - though I’ve never done it.
One obvious way would be to create a 2D animation of the face, completely in sync (or synced sections) then render to an animation and apply that animation as a texture.
Alternatively, there have been threads on changing textures frame by frame (I think) which is the other alternative.
Unless someone can give clearer advice, I’d be tempted to try option one. You could even use Blender to create the 2D animation using shadeless materials, ortho camera and shape keys on flat meshes. But if you’re comfy with doing it Gimp then that’s fine too (you can import the images and Sequence them out to a movie from Blender).
Import audio, if your using it, use the Timeline for syncing and export as AVI RAW(?). To map the movie as a texture, just look for threads or docs discussing that - it’s pretty straight forward as I recall providing the movie format is compatible.
If Wu can be dragged away from the Super Challenge, he may be able to give better advice since his own animations appear to use this technique (look at his personal website).
One way to do this is to connect your images into a long strip. Map this long image as a texture on your head, making sure it is set to Clip. Then animate the x-offset of the texture with constant interpolation on the IPO. It takes some planning ahead and tweaking to get the image sizes and positions right, but it worked a charm for me when I needed to make a digital numbers display.
Thanks for all of the input and I will try the ideas suggested. The reason I want to do this is because as a beginner I am modelling real life obejcts (that I happen to own) like lego men and other toys. These characters have facial features that are drawn on completely smooth surfaces. I have tried to model the mouth and eyes for the lego man using a boolean to cut the shapes but found it leaves the mesh in a mess.
Eventually I would like to rig and animate these characters and changing facial expressions would be a nice feature to have.
I think modelling and texturing a lego man (or at least the head) would make a great tutorial. Even though the head is essentially a tube with extruded caps, doing this without making a mess of the mesh and normals is not that easy and can be enough to put you off of blender as a beginner.
Are you looking for something like this?
Made with two seperate blend-files. One with the face, flat and animated, rendered as avi and one with the head, textured with the rendered avi-file.
I like it and it is more simple than animating the face on the head
