Tutorial Art Design: bone

RIGGING / Bone Modeling Helper Add-On For Facial Rigging

REALISM vs SUZANNE-ISM

Just yesterday, I stumbled into this website of "Higurashi no Suzuri". Not sure if that is the owner's name. Let's just call it the website of Mr.Higurashi-sama. However, "Ishidourou" is another ALIAS of Mr.Higurashi. I will have to confirm with him via email.

Here is "Ishidourou" YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSNi8Xxsd9Q7hEK6lZPuc2A

Great respect for him for writing and sharing his Blender Add-On to help when creating Bone in Blender (aka Armature object).

After installing the Add-On, you will get this additional Panel, this is quite intuitive.

Bone Modeling Helper Add-On

However, you want to check out his long video demo for the Add-On (around 30 minutes). I cannot read Japanese myself, however, the video is pretty self-explanatory.

VIDEO DEMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_BEGXA0pEo

ENGLISH VERSION (Update!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fFv9znBZOo

WEBSITE:
http://stonefield.cocolog-nifty.com/

Feel free to spend some time to watch the video demo.

This Blender Add-On is simple and practical. It does not try to do too much setup, but more for general usage. Such as converting to BONES from SELECTED MESH.

For that particular function, I also wanted to point out this interesting setup where ishidourou is showing how we can rig Suzanne Monkey Head just by using the Edge Loop, around the are of Circular Face Topology.

This is not a totally new concept, however, I figured out a few things after studying his video and trying it myself in Blender:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk8Ma5ne2pk

FACIAL RIGGING AND SETUP

With the topic of Facial Rigging, I actually have a very high interest in it. Sometimes more than biped rig alone. Biped is biped. However EVERY FACE is different. Unless it is a generic facial rig.

I have a bit obsession of Human Faces back then (and still now) and I do draw a lot of portraits. One my old dream is to be a character designer for more cartoony and stylistic character.

These days, we all know it that "realistic looking" and "hyper realistic" high detailed creature is the big thing or in high demand. I think stylistic character still have place. Both equally important.

JASON OSIPA's book "Stop Staring" has become THE ONLY CG BOOK that talks in details about facial rigging and goes about explaining how to set it up, particularly using commercial software called Maya.
http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470175044.html

That book has been updated and republished few times. "Osipa Style" has become really famous and becoming the "Industry Standard" of Facial Rigging. Both for realistic and stylistic face.

There is also another book that talks about Rigging really well, it is becoming a very rare book:
"CG Toolkit The Art of Rigging Volume 1-3".

That book talks about whole body rigging for human character and mechanical robot creature, but also touch a bit on "advanced facial rigging".

Having been a bit of a rigger and using Maya for over 10 years, I still often need to adjust my brain to really understand the ESSENCE OF RIGGING that is more general and applicable in other packages.

Currently, I am adapting to Rigging system in Blender. I am more experienced in character rigging using Maya. So I want RAGE a bit about Maya Rigging. I have serious love and hate with Maya and rigging.

Maya Rigging in summary:

Maya's Rigging involves JOINTS, DEFORMERS, CONSTRAINS, and CONTROLS. => I think these are some ELEMENTS of RIGGING. Blender has some equivalent to all those. And not forgetting SKINNING (assigning Cluster or Group or Vertices) and WEIGHT PAINTING.
Maya is a node based but also has some familiar and friendlier 3D environment like Blender, on the surface. Unlike Houdini 3D which is a fully node based, can work with almost hardly no interface in 3D view.
Being node based, it is a breeze for Maya to setup Expression, Connection, from one object to another. Blender can do this via Python and Drivers and Bone Constrains.
For Facial Rigging, typical Maya setup is to use Blendshapes and Set Driven Keys => In Blender terminology, it is just like Shapekeys and Drivers. However, there might also be some differences between the two. PROS and CONS. Blender has Action Constrains(!).
Facial Rigging can be created JOINT BASED or BLENDSHAPE BASED. For Game Production, actually Joint Based is what is more commonly used. Vertex Animation is not always supported and can be heavy for game engine.
Maya's "ADVANCE" architecture has become both a curse and a blessing. In one way, it is very flexible, on the other hand, when not careful creating and implementing Tools, CHARACTER RIG can easily be broken.
All "advanced" rigging setup has been cleverly using Maya's systems. Such as MUSCLE, RIBBON, STRETCHY, and so on. Blender has some of those features as a built-in system, ready to be used especially for Rigging.
Maya has thousands of useful MEL scripts and many AUTO-RIGGING scripts, just like Blender's Rigify and others.
Maya is very popular in CG industry for Rigging and Animation. There are PLENTY of good rig setup in Maya. Now, I also found many interesting CHARACTER RIG SETUP using Blender out there. Many of bipedal rig is using RIGIFY. Make Human is using RIGIFY too.
In the end Maya's Rigging == becoming pretty much scripted and procedural.
Maya has MUSCLE and specialized "advanced" like tension map plugins and also things like POSE SPACE DEFORMERS, etc. I talked a bit about it at my Maya blog.

http://mayaspiral.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/soup-tension-map-x-peak-auto-squash-and.html

Here is another example of Maya Face Rig by Image-Metrics showing Face Control on the right. This is a Blendshape based.

BLENDER BONE FOR FACIAL RIGGING SETUP

I am actually fairly new to Blender Rigging, in fact, I know very little about the whole workflow. From the HUMANE RIGGING DVD by Nathan Veghdal, I learned a things such as:

Blender Armature object has 2 Modes: Edit Mode and Pose Mode
Edit Mode to draw and edit the BONES
Pose Mode to setup Controls and Animate.
Blender use Bone inside Armature Object. Maya uses Joints. Joint is a single point source, Bone is more like a Capsule.
Blender has specialized Bone Constrains apart from normal Bone Constrains
Blender CONTROLS is built in and setup inside Armature System. Unlike Maya where we actually use NURBS Curve.

I have reserved a seat for JEREMY DAVIDSON's Biped Character Rigging in Blender at PL Puppeteer Lounge (PL), hopefully after the workshop I can understand Blender rigging a lot better:

http://www.blendernation.com/2014/05/30/biped-character-rigging-workshop/

I remember there is an old Maya Rigging DVD that talks about how to rig a Baboon, the Rig uses Joints that goes along the Edges:

So the concept of using Bones along facial lines is definitely not new, however in Maya the issue is:
- Joint Weighting
- Keeping Joint as Broken Hierarchy
- To be able to reset the Joints

Maya's Capsule based Skin Weighting helps a bit when weighting Joints, however, Blender Bone does it better.

There are many conventional rigging in Maya to make the above works. Joint based will work, but can be painstakingly harder.

However, I figure out that in Blender, somewhat the result of weight is much better, and the Bone system in Blender Armature just perfect for this kind of Joint Based Facial Rig.

BLENDER QUICK FACE RIGGING SETUP

Anyways, in regards to out "Bone Modeling Helper" Add-On, I did a quick exploration on how we could do a quick cartoony rig using Blender Armature system and Bone, below:

NOTE:

The Setup could be much better. I should have done some broken parenting and adding Ear Jonits. I am just showing how it can be done UNDER ONE MINUTE.
This does not mean Blender Armature system is good only for stylized cartoony character. You can use it for realistic head.

BLENDER VS MAYA FOR RIGGING

As a technical artist, I need to be fair. I would say that comparison between tools is PRETTY TIRING. Just like comparing between iPhone and Android phones. Or comparing Canon and Nikon camera.

<<< Personally, I think iPhone has a lots more added value for the price. And for camera choice, I actually like Fuji and Olympus approach, but I have Nikon.
Let them fight or CHOOSE! >>>

However, in all seriousness, IDEALLY it is necessary to be OPEN-MINDED for what tools available that can be suitable for work you are doing. We know that it is very difficult for anyone to accept a new way of working or thinking.

Our mind often goes into "reality distortion field" when COMPARING 2 THINGS for their VALUE and BENEFITS.

In fact, I learn a bit or two by using Blender that I can apply if I need to work inside Maya. I use both.

POSE LIBRARY

Blender has a built in Pose Library for its Armature system:

Blender Armature system and Paint Weighting are very flexible. Accidentally deleting Bones will not kill or crash or break the rig. The painting is much more stable.

It takes me a while to adapt to this "new" rigging system in Blender (it's simpler than Maya), but I am really happy with Blender system because of it's SIMPLICITY. I got too familiar with Maya's INPUT system where we need to be careful with the order of inputs for Rigging, such as:

UV => must be be done before Skin Cluster
Blendshapes => need to be before Skin Cluster
Skin Cluster => skinning mesh into joints => normally the last in hierarchy

Of course, we can do "transfer" etc, but does not always work perfectly.

MAYA: It does not always work. We need a script solution. Google Search

BLENDER: there is always a way around that. If not, ask Blender developers.

While in Blender, I found that:

We can change the TWIST of BONE anytime
We can edit the bone position easily at anytime
Armature Bone in Blender can in a hierarchy or as "a broken rig" and both will work fine.
Bone can always be reset to original position.
Blendshapes can be added anytime and there is a specialized Library for Blendshapes
Bones Pose Library is provided.
Animation Action of Armature
1000+ bones will not slow down Blender.

Blender Rigging System is SIMPLE and PRACTICAL. We can get complex if we want to.

Blender Game Engine (BGE) also respect the Blender Facial Bone Rigging

BONE FACE RIG AND ANIMATION INTO UNITY

Blender's Armature and animation imported into Unity via the BLEND.

When importing to Unity:

Delete the Polygon Subdiv => conversion does not seem to always work 100%
Delete the default cube, can be deleted inside Unity too I think.

When we want to make changes, we can just do it in BLEND and updates inside Unity actually Blender

BLEND and Unity are seriously made for each other.

ANISCULPT SHAPE KEY

Once upon a time ago, there is a Blender Add-On called Anisculpt allowing animator to sculpt and refine the "profile" of their animation from the shot. This is called "Blendshape Fixes" in other package to fix an ugly pose on pose basis. "Pose Space Deformation" is kind of related to this, but not exactly the same.

The Add-On is no longer needed because Blender Shape Key can do it:
https://vimeo.com/27100314

GENERALIST AND SPECIALIST

There is a trend that has been going for years: a trend of SPECIALIZING. In reality, a good 3D Artist needs to have some good understanding of general knowledge of 3D, as well as specializing in one or two areas.

To stick with our topic, I think (COMPUTER) ANIMATOR should have knowledge of RIGGING. Animators will work very closely to riggers, but animators SHOULD NOT be dumb. Especially Computer Animators. Computer Animators SHOULD NOT look down on the traditional hand drawn animations either. If one being ignorant of the others, the result could be disaster.

Sometimes, with matter of rigging, ANIMATORS can CHEAT. Sometimes a complex rigging is unnecessary. All Animators need for animation just Bones.

However, for some complex animations, we do need things like constraining objects, advanced IK, crowds, motion captures, animators should take advantage of what computer offers.

Obviously, some animators are more technical like me. Some are not. Some are more artistic and just amazingly good with understanding of TIMING and SPACING, etc.

The problem is usually TIME and ENERGY required for a single person to do everything. However, I think most of really good BLENDER artist is a good generalist and as well a specialist.

It is a debatable topic. However, if we care about being INDEPENDENT and making sure ARTISTS have freedom to produce works and no dependency on the "state of industry", we always need to be adaptable and have multiple skills. Both equally important and so balance is needed.

In a way, the more IDEAL RIG is to GIVE MORE CONTROLS to ANIMATORS to build shapes themselves for ANIMATION. Of course the are certain boundary within productions, like to maintain the shapes, ANIMATOR need to be aware of the model.

RIGGER <=> ANIMATOR <=> MODELER. Animator should push the Model.

A bit like DEVELOPER/PROGRAMMER/CODER <=> ARTIST, the intermediate solution seems to be NODING, the procedural or parametric way to do things.

BECAUSE YOUR TOOL IS STUPID...

Clever artist choose the right, practical, simple tool.

Anyway, that's all my rants on rigging and Maya. Both Maya and Blender have something to like about, in term of rigging. Blender Rigging can hopefully continue to improve.

Here is an advice:
Make the tools work for you. Do not be dependent to other's complex script. Know your tool inside out and always learn for alternative.

Maya under Autodesk is NOT good. I have serious doubt with this company. Slow in development, no proper support. I do like Maya as the tool, I really don't like the corporation that ask for $$$$ for yearly update that does not update the basic tools.

Blender should be in every University and education institution and NOT big greedy giant like Autodesk.

Thus, for me, love for Blender continues to grow. Make this Baby Godzilla works for you.

ADDITIONAL CREDITS

Thanks also to my friend, Veta, for sharing the link to Mr.Higurashi-sama website above. Otherwise we could have missed such great add-on!

VETA ANTARES:
http://blenderia.blogspot.com.au/
https://www.youtube.com/user/dotline11/videos

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Facial Expressions - A Visual Reference for Artists by MARK SIMON
Jason Osipa's "Stop Staring"

BLENDER ARMATURE & RIGIFY

(Before I jump into Blender Armature object via Python, I have to talk a little bit about Blender Armature and the Rigify Add-On....)

Ok, so I am a highly curious person about Blender Armature object. I will really investigate it like a newbie.

Blender Armature is like an Empty that it does not render, but it has a lot of special features in it. Just like Blender Curve and Blender Text object, they are special.

For every Armature object, it consists of Bones hierarchy (aka Bone Chain). Armature has 2 modes to work with: EDIT MODE and POSE MODE.

To switch to Armature Edit Mode, you select the Armature object and hit TAB.
To switch to Armature Pose Mode, you select the Armature object and hit SHIFT+TAB.

Animator animates a rigged character in Pose Mode. Armature is a single object that actually contains a lot of other objects and information, but able to maintain a Single Actions animation data.

(That is pretty much some basic Armature information that we need to know. Next, I talk a bit about Rigify...)

Apart from my interest with that Bone Object called Armature in Blender, I have also big interested with Art of Rigging inside Blender back then when I first use Blender 2.5x, and now even more so.

I definitely need to study Nathan Vegdahl DVD "Humane Rig" again. I never actually finished the whole rigging process.

http://cessen.com/stuff

http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=157

There are too many questions in my mind at the time. Not that I get less questions today, I actually have even more questions than before. But some important questions are answered along the way.

Last Friday, when I was at University computer room, I investigate Blender Rigify Add-On a little bit and use it from user's point of view from scratch to prepare the armature, run the Rigify script and skin "Make Human" mesh and also a random bi-ped creature created using Skin Modifier.

I like Rigify system, it is quite solid, a lot of magic happens in the background. Such as how Rigify uses Layers to separate the actual Skin Bones, Mechanics and the actual Controls.

One day I will spend some time to deconstruct the system that is implemented in Rigify.

For now, I will just use the meta-rig armatures for a test.

BLENDER ARMATURE VIA PYTHON

Like other special Blender Objects, the best way to investigate an object is to start from Properties.

With Armature, we need to go to Edit Mode and investigate each Bone in the hierarchy to truly understand what is happening.

Bone in Blender cannot exist by itself. It always needs 2 "joints" that is connected to each other to form a bone. Each Bone in Blender always has Head and Tail. The relationship between one bone with another bone via Parenting is important. As well as to watch for the "Local Rotation Axis" for each bone that is determined by the Roll value.

Now that we have a bit clearer picture about Armature object and Bone object (element of Armature), we can then start looking and digging it using Python Console.

I rename my Armatures as 'MyArmature' for now.
To check the Bones element inside Armature, we simply go down in the object level
Using the Python Console, we can see there are 3 bones, named "Bone", "Bone.001", "Bone.003".

I found it interesting how Python looks up Dictionary data.

Listing Methods/Functions that the Bone object has. Notice that we need to specifically point into certain Bone whether by name or index in order to dig deeper and get information.

Blender API help on Bone:

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_67a_release/bpy.types.Bone.html#bpy.types.Bone

NOTE: By no means I understand Blender Armature and Bone as whole, but here I am trying to walk you through the process on getting information using Python and use them. Often time we don't need to understand everything (sometimes impossible), unless you need to go into more complexity.

GET BONE INFORMATION

Ok, now what information do we really need to accomplish our problem in turning Armature into Skin AKA Create Skin from Bone?

Let's think.... we know that Skin Modifier only needs Polygon Mesh Edge component. What is the bare minimum of an Edge? 2 Points that are connected together.

Since we know Bone always has Head & Tail, while Edge always has 2 points that are connected, we can sort of solve our problem of "converting bone into skin".

So, we need:

1. Locations (2 XYZ positions) of Head and Tail for every bone (local position is fine)

2. Based on those Locations info, we can create Points and connect them into Edge

3. The rest, we will figure out later.

CREATE EDGE USING PYTHON SCRIPT

I am looking at these to understand how to create an Edge.

http://blenderscripting.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/using-frompydata.html

http://blenderscripting.blogspot.nl/2013/05/adding-geometry-to-existing-geometry.html

Slight modification to the script and then I got this below script that will create a mesh object which contains 2 points and an Edge. Exactly what we need at bare minimum.

import bpy

# HELPER FUNCTION THAT CREATE EDGE BASED ON SUPPLIED POSITIONS

def createEdge(coord1 = (-1.0, 1.0, 0.0), coord2 = (-1.0, -1.0, 0.0)):

Verts = [coord1, coord2]

Edges = [[0,1]]

profile_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Edge_Profile_Data")

profile_mesh.from_pydata(Verts, Edges, [])

profile_mesh.update()

profile_object = bpy.data.objects.new("Edge_Profile", profile_mesh)

profile_object.data = profile_mesh

scene = bpy.context.scene

scene.objects.link(profile_object)

profile_object.select = True

EDGES FROM BONES FOR SKIN MODIFIER

With the helper script above, we can easily turn every Bone into Edge by looping every Bone in the Armature and then run the script.

NOTE: In the script below, I am actually referencing the Object Name, instead of Armature name. Maybe you want to modify the script so that it works on Armature.

import bpy

# ACTUAL FUNCTION THAT TURN BONES INTO EDGES

def boneToEdges(armature_name='metarig'):

myRig = bpy.data.objects[armature_name]

# which armature to work on

#myRig = bpy.data.objects['Armature']

#myRig = bpy.data.objects['metarig']

# this actually return STRING NAME of bone

boneNames = myRig.data.bones.keys()

# the actual data to each

myBones = myRig.data.bones

for i, bone in enumerate(myBones):

#print(bone.name, bone.vector)

# every bone has HEAD and TAIL

#loc = bone.vector

head_loc = bone.head_local

tail_loc = bone.tail_local

createEdge(coord1 = head_loc, coord2 = tail_loc)

boneToEdges("MyArmature") # Change the name to your Armature Object Name.

Running the script above and I get multiple Edges objects like below:

We are not actually finish because my scripts is a bit of half done. It only creates Edges from every Bones. We need to Join (CTRL+J) all the edges into a single mesh and the Remove Doubles (merge overlapping points). Once we have a single mesh, we can then apply Skin Modifier.

You can quick select the Edges created using the script using the QUICK SELECT script below and then CTRL+J to join them into a single mesh, and then you can Remove Doubles..

import bpy

# Get all objects named "NAME*" and put it in a list

mesh = bpy.data.objects

sel = [item for item in mesh if "Edge_Profile" in item.name]

for item in sel:

item.select = True

USING THE SCRIPT ON RIGIFY (HUMAN-METARIG)

Let's try this on Rigify Bones. If we use the script on the Rig object (with controls), we get something like below:

If we use the Human Meta-Rig object, we get slightly cleaner Edges that potentially can be used for Skin Modifier.

With slight clean up and connecting and Remove Doubles, we get a Skin Modifier ready edges, that we can easily turn into a mesh:

BVH Motion Capture Data to Skin Modifier

If we import BVH data into Blender, we know we get Armature that is already animated, right? So we can use the script above to "Skin the Bone".

Below is from JPOP Group "Perfume" Motion Capture Dance data which was made available for download and really popular last year:

The Skin is dancing in no time.

Once we create Edges that is "Skin Modifier ready", we can easily modify the Skin and quickly Auto-Weight it to the original Skeleton.

I actually quite like the fact that Blender has separate Edit Mode and Pose Mode. We can match the Bone in Edit Mode (the default pose), regardless the animation in Pose Mode.

VIDEO DEMO "Bone to Skin"

SOME LIST OF GOOD VIDEOS ON WORKING WITH BVH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzYotTZVhcM
https://vimeo.com/12340788
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1ySIpWZgo

DOWNLOAD FREE BVH
https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/cmu-bvh-conversion

HORSE BVH?

I am trying to get Quadruped BVH data, that would be interesting. Anyways, for Biped BVH data, there are quite a lot on the Internet. I wish I have my own Kinect to do mocap data, that will be fun.

Labels

Movies Post

Sports

Music

Business

Pictures

728x90 AdSpace

Travel

Fashion

Design

Movies

Recent Videos

Labels

Category

Slider

Recent Post

Games

Popular Posts

Pages

Find Us On Facebook

Links

About Me

Technology

Breaking News

FACIAL RIGGING AND SETUP

BLENDER BONE FOR FACIAL RIGGING SETUP

BLENDER QUICK FACE RIGGING SETUP

NOTE:

BLENDER VS MAYA FOR RIGGING

POSE LIBRARY

BONE FACE RIG AND ANIMATION INTO UNITY

ANISCULPT SHAPE KEY

GENERALIST AND SPECIALIST

BECAUSE YOUR TOOL IS STUPID...

ADDITIONAL CREDITS

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

OTHER LINKS

BLENDER ARMATURE & RIGIFY

BLENDER ARMATURE VIA PYTHON

GET BONE INFORMATION

CREATE EDGE USING PYTHON SCRIPT

EDGES FROM BONES FOR SKIN MODIFIER

USING THE SCRIPT ON RIGIFY (HUMAN-METARIG)

BVH Motion Capture Data to Skin Modifier

VIDEO DEMO "Bone to Skin"

OTHER LINKS

MKRdezign

Contact Form