Summary

Eyes, mouth, cheeks, eyebrows: all extremely important I think you will agree.

Synopsis: We will rig the pupils, eyes, eyelids, cheeks, eyebrows, teeth, tongue, lips, the nose (of course) etc to get a great range of natural and dramatic emotional output from our beautiful female characters.

Supporting Me

If you would like to support the free work I do, the extensive videos and documentation, and the community Discord server (click here to get in!) please head over to my Flipped Normals and either buy a character, or a tutorial. Just spend whatever amount of money you feel equals the value I bring to the world. I also have a Gumroad page and ArtStation page.

Images On This Page

The images are of Monette Taida, whose face rig is we will be rebuilding and updating. The technical overview will use Joliette Fleurs, and the full tutorial uses the character Monette Taida, with common references to Joliette.

All characters can be purchased! See store links above or below.

Lesson Sessions

This lesson is very lengthy, broken up into several sessions clocking in over 5 hours! The sessions are as follows:

1. Session 0 - (03m40s) Impetus and Overview of Bone Groups
2. Session 1 - (03m56s) Quick Overview of the Old Face Rig
3. Session 2 - (15m03s) Crown and the Upper Cheek Bones
4. Session 3 - (05m21s) Ear Controller and how it Interfaces with the Neck
5. Session 4 - (18m58s) Nose and Naso Labials
6. Session 5 . (10m52s) First Basic Mouth Controls
7. Session 5 . (16m29s) Finishing the Mouth Controls
8. Session 6 - (04m30s) Eyelids Remeshing for the New Rig
9. Session 7 - (32m15s) More Cheecks and Adding Dimples
10. Session 8 . (33m01s) Jaw Control, Lips Tweaking, and Tongue
11. Session 8 . (01m21s) Dimples Details
12. Session 8 . (00m56s) How the Mesh Works on Joliette Fleurs for Dimples
13. Session 9 - (22m00s) Eye Controls and Eye Object Parenting
14. Session 10 - (20m04s) Basic Chin Automation
15. Session 11 - (13m02s) Eye and Cheek Bones
16. Session 12 - (21m46s) Eyelids
17. Session 13 - (18m35s) Eyebrows, Eyelids, and Eye Controller Constraints
18. Session 14 - (19m15s) Placing Eyelashes and Fixing up Eyelids More
19. Session 15 - (44m57s) Eye Rigging Action Constraints: Blinking, Winking, and More!
20. Session 16 - (05m57s) Making the Pupils Dilate and Constrict
21. Session 17 - (19m45s) Mouth Action Constraints, Smiling, Frowning, Grimacing, etc
22. Session 18 - (23m06s) Eyebrows Controllers

Full multi-hour step-by-step setup can be found: on Gumroad, on FlippedNormals, or on ArtStation.

Bone Hierarchy

The bones of the face rig, as noted in our Scripts section of the file. This is mostly-correct, but as you probably will notice as you go through the tutorial, occasionally I decide to go off-script and do things differently. Still, this is a useful reference.

Hierarchy

• def-head - this is the parent of all the following bone groups

Forehead and Upper Cheek Bones

• def-crown.L,R - forehead
  • def-crown.L,R.001 - side of head
    • def-crown.L,R.002 - back top of skull
    • def-sphenoid.L,R - to just behind eyes
    • def-zygomatic.L,R - top part of cheek
    • def-zygomatic.L,R.001 - mid part of cheek, nearly to dimple
      • mch-dimpleHold.L,R - dimple mechanism to keep from being wild, related to def-dimple.L

Ears

• def-earMaster.L,R - deforms ears, top of sternocleidomastoid stretches to here

• def-noseTop - stretches to def-noseBottom
• def-noseBottom - cartelege part of nose, stretches to def-mouthTop
  • def-noseOutside.L,R - outside of nose, points at def-mouthBetweenTop.L
    • def-nasolabia.L,R - deforms from nose to cheek area
    • def-nasolabia.L,R.001 - deforms from mouth corner up to nose

Mouth

• ctrl-mouthMaster - metacontrol for various smile/frown/open/close actions
• ctrl-mouthFront - points to and stays distance from ctrl-mouthCentre
  • def-mouthTop
  • def-mouthBetweenTop.L,R
  • def-mouthCorner.L,R
  • def-mouthBetweenBot.L,R
  • def-mouthBot
• ctrl-mouthCentre

Cheeks

• ctrl-cheekPuff.L,R
  • def-cheek.L,R - deforms her cheek, stretches to def-mouthCorner.L
    • def-dimple.L,R - deforms her dimple
    • def-cheekNearMouth.L,R - deals with bottom side of mouth corners, into cheek, related to mch-cheekNearMouthStay.L,R

Skull

• def-skullBase.L,R - behind the ears
  • def-neckBackTop.L,R - top of the trapezius

Jaw/Tongue

• ctrl-jawMaster - the jaw does a damped track to this control
• mch-jawMaster - the parent of all the jaw bones
  • def-jawLineBelowEar.L,R - below ear
    • def-jawLine.L,R - to the Chin
      • mch-cheekNearMouthStay.L,R - holds cheek deforms from being wild, related to def-cheekNearMouth.L,R.
  • ctrl-tongueFront - general control/deform of front side of tongue
    • def-tongueFront.L,R - extends influence of front-side of tongue
  • def-tongueBack - stretches to ctrl-tongueFront and copies scale of the front-side control

Eyes

• ctrl-eye.L,R - metacontrols for pupil dilation and independent eye looking
• ctrl-eyes - metacontrol for where she looks
• ctrl-eyeMaster,szz=blink,gxx=wink - metacontrol for blink/wink/wideeyes actions
• ctrl-eyeMaster.L,R - allows sizing and moving of entire eye
  • ctrl-eyeUnder.L,R - allows moving, sizing of muscles under eye
    • def-eyeUnder.L,R - the deforming bone
  • ctrl-eyelidsLower.L,R - lower eyelid open/close
  • ctrl-eyelidsUpper.L,R - upper eyelid open/close
  • mch-eyeAttach.L,R - where the cornea, eye, attach to, damped track to ctrl-eye.L,R
  • mch-eyelidRotateLess.L,R - parent of eyelids to have them move slightly with eye
    • def-eyelidTopOut.L,R - part of upper eyelid between rim and eyebrow (and many children)
    • def-eyelidTopRim.L,R - rim of upper eyelid (and many children)
    • def-eyelidBotRim.L,R - rim of lower eyelid (and many children)

Eyebrows

• ctrl-eyeBrows - metacontrol for eyebrows raise/lower/angry/sad actions
• mch-eyebrowCentre.L,R - controls overall eyebrow size/placement
  • def-eyebrow.L,R.003 - stretches to def-eyebrow.L,R.002
  • ctrl-eyebrowOuter.L,R - outer part of eyebrow
    • def-eyebrow.L,R.004 - stretches to def-eyebrow.L.003
  • ctrl-eyebrowMiddle.L,R - middle/inner part of eyebrow
    • def-eyebrow.L,R.002
    • ctrl-eyebrowInner.L,R - very inner part of eyebrow
    • def-eyebrow.L,R.001
      • def-eyebrow.L

Educational Offerings

You can watch my Youtube channel to find many videos, including overviews of the face rig and all kinds of other stuff!

Also, check out my stores for pretty cheap tutorials/characters:

• Gumroad,
• FlippedNormals,
• ArtStation.

More Pictures of the Face Rig!

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