Use Ludwig Facial Arm. with Rigged Suzanne?

Hi,
I was thinking of trying to import the facial armature used in “Ludwig” into “Rigged Suzanne.”
First … would it be violating any terms for either license?
And second … what do you think?
Is it doable?
Would the constraints come along when importing the armature?

Thanks,

Steve

You can probably bring the constraints along in one go otherwise the list which comes up when you append should allow you to bring it along.

Thanks. I’ve made some minor progress with this idea. I’ve gotten the face_armature appended and it lines up pretty close and the constraints for the facial contol came across.
I also learned how to assign verts to a group in order to fix a few, for Suzanne’s right ankle, that weren’t assigned to all necessary groups.
So, I’m on the right track. Also, Ludwig uses envelopes and Suzanne Uses Vertex groups so I’m going to have to just create the groups for the face and then figure out how to link them to the armature.

None of the above I had a clue about 2 days ago so I’m a happy camper. :slight_smile:

The licensing terms for Ludwig are in the original file, and the rig is free to use for any purposes, but not the mesh.

Select the Suzanne mesh, then SH -sel the armature, press CTR-P, choose Armature (Make Parent) (not “bone” or "Object), then you have the option of creating vertex groups from the closest bones, which creates the groups and assigns the verts, just create the groups but don’ assign
verts (Name groups) or don’t create the groups at all.

I like to use “closest bones” to get a head start, then use Weight Painting
/ Vertex Assignment / editor to tweak things.

Deselect everything, then re select the mesh, go to the Modifier panel (F9),and click the “Make Real” button beside the “Armature Parent Deform” entry, which converts it to a Modifier. Then turn off the Envelopes (or leave them on depending on your preference).

Use Weight painting and/or the Vertex groups editing features to tweak.

Ryan Dale’s “Intro To Character Animation”, is a great tutorial that covers weight painting, rigging and just about everything else you need to know for the basics of rigging. See link to it in my sig.

Mike

Thanks Mike. Great info and definately pushing me forward.
I intuitively did the parenting correctly and all is well there.

Do you forsee any technical problems by leaving the face control and the face armature where I have them here?
It’s just less visually confusing to me that putting them inside the head.
http://www.sightsea.com/renders/FaceControl.jpg
Thanks

Solved!
I found the shape keys that were included with Suzanne and they’re much easier to work with so I removed the Ludwig face rig.