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CA515: Facial Animation Studies This course focuses on analysis of the animation cycle, traditional animation techniques, and the study of motion and experimental animation. Students will focus on facial animation and gesture techniques. Specifically, students will build self-portraits, record audio, and perform animation tests with rigged busts of their own heads.

JUMP TO A SPECIFIC WEEK:

week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, week 7, week 8, week 9, week 10, week 11

 

Week 1: DOWNLOAD THE SYLLABUS

The Focus of Week 1 will be to take reference for your project. First we will take photos from numerous angles for you to use in the Modeling and Texturing stage of your quarter long project, then we will film video from which we can also extract audio to use as reference for the animation portion of your project.

During the course of the quarter we will create 1 single quarter-long project where we model/UV/texture/light/rig/animate/render/composite a self-portrait bust performing a 1-2 sentence animation.

 

We will be using Photoshop, Maya, Zbrush, 3dCoat, Crazybump, Soundbooth, After Effects, Premiere this quarter to accomplish this task. You will find a logo for each program used during a given week listed on the corresponding course webpage with the needed notes.

SUGGESTED COURSE TEXTBOOKS:
ZBrush Digital Sculpting, Human Anatomy, Scott Spencer

Stop Staring: Second Edition, Jason Osipa, ISBN: 978-0-471-78920-8

Essence: The Face, Ballasitc Publishing


More Hyper-Reaslist Character Creation, Autodesk, Sybex, ISBN: 978-1897177495

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Here is an example of the reference video we will take:

 

 

Adobe Soundbooth:

Once we open Soundbooth, we can drag our video clip right into the editing window, which will display the waveform:

 

 

Exporting out the Audio is a simple as going to File-Save As. Choose Waveform audio file (.wav) as your file format which will allow you to import it into Maya:

Have this file saved out as we will implement it later in the quarter.

 

 

 

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Now lets take some reference photos:

It's important to save photograph as high resolution as possible with as even lighting as possible. This can be achieved by photographing on cloudy overcast days, or photographing indoors with a properly white balanced camera using diffuse gels and reflectors. You will need at least 15-20 photos from multiple angles. Don't forget behind the ears, under the neck, or ontop of the head. Bracket your exposures and work at the highest resolution your camera affords. The photos below were originally taken at 2000x3000 pixels and 300dpi.


Here is an example of photos taken with overcast outdoor lighting:


And here are some photos taken set up with lights in a studio:

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And now, into Maya, lets start building our heads:

EDGE-EXTRUSION MODELING METHOD TUTORIAL:

OR READ THIS:

Overall, we can use roughly the same topology to create multiple "looks" for the same face.
In the image below, only minor gridflow changes are made, but the face can take on an entirely
different character, just from these little vertex moves:


Here is another image showing even different features,
this time using an Asian female facial shape:

Here is yet another example:

As we build our topology, our number 1 goal is going to be to try and make the gridflow of the Polygons
match the direction of flow of the underlying muscles as much as possible. Key emphais should be
placed on the muscles shown and labeled below. Note how you can see the same structures in all 4 images:
1-The ecorche NURBS template built off of a skeleton
2-An actual Muscle Diagram
3-Loops drawn in Photoshop on a photo of a Human Head
4-A finalized polygon model.

Lets start exploring the shapes of these individual features:

Mouth

With the mouth, there are several major features that we must take into account. The largest muscle in the face is the orbicularis oris which constricts the opening and closing of the lips. The buccinator muscle can be found at both corners of the mouth sometimes slightly overlapping or overhanging these corners based on age. During chewing it cooperates with the masitcatory muscles in the cheeks and jaw, and is also used in sucking movements, and in "ooo" and "woo" sounds. The philtrum is the vertical indentation in the midline of the upper lip. Also called infranasal depression, it is what seperates the upper lip into it's "M" shape.

Viewed from the front, the lips should be like a gummi-life saver, able to squish and stretch. The Topolgy for this feature should be contained within its own circular edgeloop as we will look at performing facial animation with the mouth later on. The Upper lip is normally thinner than the Lower lip, with the ratio of one to the other usually determining "poutyiness". Towards the edges they get closer and smaller, until the upper lip rotates around the corner and overhangs the lower as it flows into that structure.

From the side, the shape of the lips is very distinct. The upper lip has a ridge which distinguishes where the muscle tissue from the inside of the mouth (the pinker areas) meets the surrounding skin. The lower lip has no such feature and is usually a much more smooth, rounder transition.

Ears

Building an Ear, tutorial 1
Building an Ear, tutorial 2

Building an Ear, tutorial 3 <--Click on Tab "8.Ear"

Building a proper ear can be difficult due to the multile structure contained inside. There are three tutorials listed above, and they should be used for guidance in how to create these structures. While each approaches the ear from a different modeling perspective, they arrive at mainly the same concluding point, which I find valuable to illustrate how the creation of these forms is independant of modeling methodology.

Here however, we will talk much more generally about what these structures are, and how to approach building them. The Numbering below referes to the diagram above

1. We begin in creating the ear by first establishing a line of gridflow from the jaw line, just under the Tragus (the tiny flap at the front of the ear), over the Lobule which is the skin flap the bottom of your ear. Depending the person, this flap may actually be attached, or remain independant. This edgeflow feature continues, turning upward to define the outer edge of the ear known as the Helix. This size of the helix determines the over all size of the outer ear or Pinna, how much they "stick out", etc... We should also note here that the size of this feature is mainly dependent on age. Since the ears continue to steadily grow throughout life, by old age they can seem large and disproportionate to the rest of the face, especially the Lobule and Helix.
This feature continues to spiral around to the top of the ear which is known as The Crest of the Helix, eventually flowing inward to become the Auditory Canal, the feature which allows sound to to enter the the Inner ear. This edgeflow pattern is crucial and should look like a spiral, mimicing the way that sound will spiral into the ear.

2. The second direction of gridflow again starts out over the jawline, and here crosses over the lower edge of the Crest of the Helix, and then directly into the Auditory Canal.

3. The Third feature for the ear that is determined by different gridflow comes from the top of the head. It enters the ear on the posterior side of the Crest of the Helix, flowing back up over the crest, and into the anterior side of the Pinna. When it crosses over to the front, we use these verticies to form the Antihelix which flows back down against the the helix, splitting off at the ear lobe, and into the auditory canal. Notice a theme so far? Every structure flows into the audiotoy canal!

4. The final main structure that we see is gridflow originating from the back of the head which crosses the Helix behind the ear, travels across the Antihelix, then flows directly into the auditory canal

Nose

The nose can very distincly define who your character is. Its shape, size, "direction", can all point to signs of gender, age and race. While we shall tread lightly on racial features, anaylze in you character whether or not their nose needs to be small, thin, pointy, wide, upturned, crooked/downturned, bullish, etc... These are all terms that we commonly use, and defining how your character needs to be developed before actually modeling the nose will greatly influence your decisions. In general, Male adult humans have larger noses than Female adult humans in terms of displacement off the cranial structure. While shape may vary depending on racial and other genetic features, age will also cause (just like the ears) the percepition of a larger nose, as the cartilage continues to grow throughout life.

Regardless of genetics, the External naris, or nostrils, will always have two definative traits as seen above. From both the front and side views, we should be able to see into the nostrils, veiwing the lateral cartilage from the side, and the top of the orbicularis oris from the front

Eyelids/Eyebrows

The Eyelids are yet another structure which demans attention based on genetica features, and is also crucial when it comes to the animation of our characters. The Orbicularis Occuli is the facial muscle, behaving just like the orbicularis oris in the mouth, which allows us to blink, wink, and open our eyes. As such, since this a continuous loop of muscle, our topology must be built accordingly.

The Frontalis Muscle is located just above the orbicularis occuli and is commonly known as the eyebrow muscle. It lifts the eyebrow out of the way and is a muscle of facial animation.It starts on the top of the head and attaches to the eyebrow skin. There is one for each brow. It works with facial expression. It can lift the eyelid in a secondary fashion and can compensate for eyelid muscles to a certain degree. With the aging face, the brow can descend with gravity.

The Corrugator is a small, narrow, pyramidal muscle, beneath the Frontalis and Orbicularis oculi. While this is an important muscle, and distinct from the other two in the eyes, it usually isn't modeled seperately.

The Epicanthic Fold, or epicanthus, is a skin fold of the upper eyelid covering the inner corner of the eye. It is independant of the Upper Eyelid fold and but may at times be present without the upper eyelid fold, espically in individuals of Asiatic descent. In fact most humans of Caucasian or African descent will exhibit the Upper Eyelid fold but not the Epicanthic fold, and as such, this feature can be a main signifier of race.

 

 

Using Image Planes to fine-tune your reference:

 

 

 

Here is a Written Tutorial on inserting image planes..... Click on image:

 

 

HOW TO IMPORT IMAGE PLANES FOR YOUR CHARACTER MODELING PROJECT:

	In part 1 of this 10 part series, Andrew Klein (www.andrewklein.net) covers cropping images and changing levels in Photoshop to create suitable image planes for Maya
	In part 2 of this 10 part series, Andrew Klein (www.andrewklein.net) looks at creating and setting a project in Maya.
	In part 3 of this 10 part series, Andrew Klein (www.andrewklein.net) examines importing and repositioning our first image plane, the top-down image.
	In part 4 of 10 of this series, Andrew Klein (www.andrewklein.net) looks at how to align the remaining 2 image planes so that they match the top-down "master" view. This is done through the use of polygon planes which act as rulers.