In my opinion the best workflow as an animator reside in the mix and match of both. You animate with bones, then you add the icing on top of the cake using shape keys.

@Violn95

6 ай бұрын

Maybe do that the other way around? Might be better to get general placement of expressions and then fine tune things with bones

@SymbolCymbals2356

6 ай бұрын

@@Violn95 You have it backwards, with bones you can put the face in any position without limits but it’s missing finer detail like smile lines for example which is why you use a shapekey on top to fix any issues or add little details like that since they excel at fine detail and specific shapes Video games (for hardware performance purposes) do use shapekeys for the entire face but that can run into the issue of shapekeys not interacting well together and creating artifacts that are difficult to find and diagnose beforehand. You also need a TON of shapekeys to make the facial expressions not look repetitive, 52 is a common number of shapekeys and that’s a ton of work just to mimic what bones do for a fraction of the work

@Violn95

5 ай бұрын

@@SymbolCymbals2356 sorry, I did have that backwards

@DimensionDoorTeam

4 ай бұрын

+1

@DimensionDoorTeam

4 ай бұрын

It always depends on your goals. For game engines, I prefer focusing on bones first because it gives much more control.

shape key rigging is how you create photorealistic facial animations. It doesn't end up choppy because you can blend all of the shape keys together at the same time. You can even use apple ar or any facial tracking but you do need to create at least 52 blendshapes which takes forever :((((

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

However, this method of rigging the shape keys uses the distance to the images, so as the selector moves over the images it turns on any shape keys it passes over, that's what causes the "choppy" animation in this instance.

@ngophap6706

3 ай бұрын

try Face it addon

Wow! I never imagined shape keys being used so effortlessly and conveniently. They've always been a bit of a hassle to work with, especially when dealing with a large number of them. However, this approach changes the game entirely.

The models I'm working on won't benefit from this, but I'm still listening just because this guy has a really soothing voice

I'm currently learning animation on this 6 month journey, your video made me excited. This feels like such an accessible way to animate different facial expression. I'll follow your tutorial step by step, thank you Vertex

I really appreciate this, I was waiting for this tutorial. It's a game changer for the "Stylized Look" that this method can add on expression...Thanks for sharing your awesome work!

Omg this is insane was tearing my hair out at how daunting face animation was this deserves an award, amazing tutorial and reignited the flame for animating please keep making these tutorials! ❤

OML what a savior. cant imagine how on earth you figured out how to do all this but glad you did!

personally i would recommend both rigged and shapekeyed .. shapekeyed for expressions and the rigged for subtle after motions with bendy bones (dynamic phone or physbones)

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's a valid approach!

I'm going to save this video to come back to in the future, this seems really useful! Thanks for making it

This is a really hard topic to explain in such a clear way. Great work!!

This is awesome! I really like how you explain some steps so we learn how everything actually works and not just how to use everything!

Awesome, I'm buying the add-on, the work put on explaining and creating it is just superb.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Thank you!

I appreciate that you took the time to make a tutorial on how to do something, while not just shoving a addon down our throats. Like- “This Method requires this addon, and can only be done with this addon.” Absolutely stunning man! I’ll go an support you when I can! Even if I don’t plan on using the addon version.

Ive never seen this method explained more clearly, excellent video 👍

This is life changing knowledge for me!! I had no idea it can be done in that way!

this was a very helpful video and lesson. Shape key driver setup is so nice looking being able to have a preview of the emotion is very handy

Wow that's an amzing tutorial, well done.

This extremely high quality. It helps so much thank you !!!

10:48 you have cleared my doubt on a whole another level especially about the drivers

This is so cool! Thank you for sharing this amazing tool!

That's just awesome! Thank you so much for the lesson!

Very nicely presented!

I'm new to blender. I don't fully get it now but I know I'll understand it later. Thank you very much.

its the MOST underrated thing ive ever seen

Awsome!! great applied for expression

a very useful tutorial, thank you!

Thanks you so much for this tutorial!

You are God-sent. BIG THANK YOU.

It's a great video! Thanks for helping a lot!

Very informative. Helped a lot

Great work! Subbed! This really got me thinking too. I mostly do abstraction and motion graphics, zero character work. This same method might work with a selector that's being randomly moved via geometry nodes. This might be a workflow for creating seemingly greater variation between multiplied models...

That's an amazing addon but you really should show people how to go through and make one of these stylized models for this. Cause I would love to do this cause it seems a lot easier than 3d facial expression modelling, but I have no idea how to make these.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

I'll add it to my list of videos to make!

@snakkattakk

6 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade Please do! These stylized models would be much easier for people to make than more detailed ones!

I was wondering this thing ! thanks

massive props for making a tutorial on how to set the basic version of the addon you made up yourself while explaining how the addon works and can be used. just truly amazing! im an indie dev and not yet very fluent in animation. what are the potential downsides of shapekey animation in a stylized context?

minor nitpick, but no, this isn't how most 2d animation is done, i know that you didn't mean anything bad by it, but by reducing the painstaking process of hand-drawn 2d animation to "picking and choosing" you're kinda contributing to the idea of "the computer does everything" which i know that as an animator you're annoyed by too. anyway, I think the reason a lot of animators like to have this absolute control over their work is that, unlike real life, every frame should be controlled, handled carefully and generally be pleasing to look at. this mindset is what leads to great moving pictures that also look like great normal pictures.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

I completely understand, I didn't mean to undersell the 2D process, I was mostly talking about the tween style animation that it widely used in TV shows on a tight schedule. Hand drawn animation is definitely its own art form

Super awesome!!! 💖💖

Wow, it's super.

great tutorials

awesome tutorial✌, shape key or morphing workflow has been around forever in other 3d programs its very good not just for faces, blender has it too but most people will just use that default bone face rig thingy

lovely, i have to (re)build this :-)

Magnificent!

Awesome! Thank youuuu....

this is fire

it's great

@wakegary

2 ай бұрын

it really is.

Bro went and created an animation editor with models... And, its probably universal! lol This dude went omega brain.

Yeah we use to learn facial animation like that on 3DS max, it's called morpher in Max like in morphing. very easy and user friendly but efectively less realistic on realistic caracter.

Nice!

On the refrain of "shape keys animate linearly" - they don't have to. You can set interpolation of a driver to be non-linear, as well as just non-linear for set keyframes.

Great tutorial! Any plans on making a video on how to make stylized faces like this?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Rigging isn't my strong suit so probably not. I can make stylised models, but rigging them correctly for animation just isn't my forte. If I really needed to rig a face I would just use something like the FaceIt addon that generates one automatically

Cool addon but I can't work with face rigs only using blendshapes, it's too repetitive and all the blending is linear. Adding bones on top of blendshapes can make sure that you're hitting your nicely sculpted poses but you can give more variety by offseting things using the bones, and you can create nice arcs for things like mouth transitions.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, there's a preferred use case for this and that would be very stylised choppy animation that doesn't necessarily require blending between frames. You could get creative with the shape keys though, like in these examples. It's a different way of thinking about animation but I think there's use cases for both methods. kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZmdtsaSKnJq2kps.htmlsi=68uqAKIyMky01dcy&t=695

@pikachufan25

6 ай бұрын

Gonna head to sleep after This xD: Just Search: live2d mouth chart Repetive Hell Yea!: But "Bad Results cause of X Reason" i disagree... since Live2D uses a Very Similar Workflow which can get Very Smooth Results if Done Propertly... (and Yes i know there are Differences between them but its Close Enough that you can probably get a Really Good Result just Using them...)

You Should do a thing showing from opening blender to getting to the point where you can edit the face...

i call this this is OLD SCHOOL of animate before rigging. The modern animate for now use camera live (video) to animate, and next generation use Ai for animate

you are really Osm man

Just note that this will not work with more complex faces, as shape keys animate linearly, and thus cannot make curved movements. For example, a model with giant eyes, where lids need to be rotated down to close - would clip through eye balls if done with shape keys.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, although you can get creative with the way you make shape keys. If I ever needed some curved motion, I would create an intermediate shape key, and then blend from the open blink to the intermediate then to the closed blink, it's a little more work, but it is possible. I've seen some videos where people actually separate the XYZ coordinates of a shape key and then animate them using drivers. It's not the most flexible approach but it can be done

Great tutorial! Will your addons work fine on newest Blender version?

Hello! I practice realtime animation in blender and have been looking for somewhat of a puppeteer tool for it. Daz3d has the best one but this interests me. Does this work on bones? Can I store multiple poses and then blend between them?

Огромное спасибо

Thanks. Good method but as you said, the selector moving between expressions can mess up the transition, touching unwanted expressions in the process. Also, if your selector is an object and not a bone, then the animation won't port properly to game engines.

Deffinately looks like the style I want to use. Can I put in my own svg files, and swap them for different character setups?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Do you mean the images? Yeah, you can set up any character with shape keys and they can have their own set of images that match to them, then you can have more characters with separate shape keys and separate rigs

Is there a way to have 2 selectors for 1 driver of a facial expression? I try to add another selector for a driver of a facial expression and while the new selector works, it overwrites the previous selector and the previous selector no longer works. I would have to delete the second selector so the original selector can work again. I want to achieve this so I can mix multiple face expressions at one time. So say I have 2 mouth expressions, one is Smiling and one is Angry. I want to mix them both together at full values and I don't think I can achieve this with only 1 selector. Any insight? Thanks for your time.

@VertexArcade

2 ай бұрын

The only way to do that would be to have 2 images overlapping, so one for your smile and angry, and then do the same driver setup, so as you move the selector it will activate both of them. The only other way would be to make a new combined shape key that's Angry Smile using the Shape Key Mix option

@MetaKirb7

2 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade Got it, that makes sense. Thanks again for your time!

I'm pretty sure Minecraft Story Mode did something with the Mouths. Is this similar?

How do I make that circle thing that deforms the mesh appear? I'm on edit mode and I don't know what you're using

Ive seen a video explaining this but this video seems much more detailed wbich i love. Question...would it be good to use this process set up for facial animations this way for Games. Im creating a game and need facial animations. Would shapekey facial animation be better used for film and poses or would you be able to use them in game engines

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, shape keys to control facial animation is definitely an easy way to do facial animation. Most game engines can read shape keys/morphs/blendshapes, so if you have them as part of your regular animation (walk/run etc) then the face will be animated as well!

@indianastilts

6 ай бұрын

@VertexArcade amazing would it be easier to use this method for games then using the rigging face method?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

I would say yes. It all depends on the style of animation and game. For a game that focuses on the characters faces a lot, you might need the extra control of the a proper rig, but if the game is more simple and the facial animation isn't going to be complex, then that would be the easier method

@indianastilts

6 ай бұрын

@VertexArcade amazing and prompt response so thank you soo soo much. Moulding the face this way seems fun also and freeing to make it exactly how you want then a face rig. I'll have a look at the addon also when I get to the animation stage of face for my game. Loooove this and subscribed from me and liked. Will check your other videos out

Woooooooooooooooow!

I did what u did but for some reason, it doesn't have a mixed expression instead went from the expression then the default then the expression what should I do.

Hey where is that gwen model from? Need it

Heyy I LOVE your Gwen Spider-Verse Model! How do you add the 2D lines for the facial expressions??? a tutorial on that would be sooo awesome! thank you! SUBED.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

They're just tiny meshes that I put in front of the model! I'm actually making a tutorial on it right now! Different ways to get line art and I cover that method!

@Koda.Fisher

6 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade Omg no way!? Thank you sm, I am so excited! Ive been looking for a tut on this forever!

Yoooo How did you make that spiderverse material for gwen? Not like the hatching or halftone but like the base material used on her face?

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

It's just a basic toon shader, mix a diffuse shaded into a shader to rgb node, then using a color ramp you can control the sharpness of the shadows

@Stargorithm

5 ай бұрын

thank you!@@VertexArcade

Can you make a vid showing how to use your add on plzz

how many more times are we going to reinvent blend shapes

I hope you eventually make a V2 with smoothing

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

What do you mean by smoothing?

@buster5661

5 ай бұрын

14:25:@@VertexArcade

Hello! This tutorial is absolutely insane, thank you! I have a question, I'm trying to achieve this using bones instead of cursors, any Idea why it's not working? I think it's the transform space.

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

Yeah I couldn't get bones to work! It's something to do with the the fact that the bones are children of an armature, so the spaces don't work the same way as the transform space of an object. I'm not really sure how to get it to work, I tried everything I could but nothing ever worked

@John.Animation-nx4dy

5 ай бұрын

Thanks a lot!@@VertexArcade

does anyone know how one would control the direction of the eye with this type of rig?

@VertexArcade

15 күн бұрын

It's the exact same process as the facial expressions, however this time instead of smiling,frowning etc, you make a bunch of different shape keys for the eye direction, so Eyes Up, Eyes Left, Right etc. then you create the image planes the exact same way, but this time put them in a grid, so the Default eye position at the center, eyes Right to the right, eyes left to the left, Eyes up at the top. The only difference is the shape keys, the rest of it is exactly the same

i want to use it with 3d images. does it work with 2d images to create different facial expressions?

is it possible to bake these animations so it can be exported into unity or unreal?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

There's no need to bake them, if you keyframe the shape keys they'll be exported when you export your model/rig!

@ryenis

6 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade ty!

Is it possible to rig this with a face tracking program?

Awesome!!!! Please, someone build a plugin of this

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Well.... I did! blendermarket.com/products/shape-key-selector

Bro make some character tutorial like this head plss

This addon seems amazing but i'm not sure about the poses not being able to blend smoothly. How would u get that done and why does it need python?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

With this version, to animate we are keyframing the position of the selector, so if the selector has to move from the first image to the last image, it will activate all of the images as it moves. The addon version keyframes the shape keys directly. However, in Blender, you can't have a driver on a shape key AND keyframe it, so I had to come up with a method that used custom properties and some fancy code to set the values of the shape keys WITHOUT the drivers so that we can keyframe them. So the addon version would keyframe the first shape and the the last one and smoothly blend between them because it doesn't have to activate the shapes as it moves, we have keyframed the shape keys directly

@olamidesamuel9734

6 ай бұрын

​@@VertexArcade so all the weird problems like the selector moving across other images and it not transitioning smoothly between key frames is solved by the addon version of thus tutorial

Its there a were of form to make the controls three times with the same model?? You Know, maybe 1 controller for the right eye, 1 controller for the left eye, and another controller for the 2 eyes at the same time??

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

You could always separate the shape keys into Left and Right using a Vertex Group, then create a second Selector and repeat the same process, this time using the distance between the new selector and the image to control the left or right shape key, then you can move them independently and if you want to control them together you can just move both of the selectors at once

whenever i try to seperate the face into L or R i keep getting an "a is not defined error"

@mildrice9781

6 ай бұрын

I removed the a from the script the error isn't there anymore but the left and right sides still dont generate

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah that was a silly error that got through (but I uploaded a newer version without that error). A selects everything in Blender so I was on the wrong window when I pressed it. Hmm the separate Shape Keys should work and it works on my end, can you send me a message on Twitter/Blender market with your issue? Just quick troubleshooting, make sure your model is selected, you have chosen the category that you want to separate and that your shape keys are named correctly, click the Rename/Validate button and see if it helps

Hey, can you tell me how much it will cost to make a custom anime looking male character for using in blender and as a vr avatar. from you or other artists.please answer if possible.

@VertexArcade

4 ай бұрын

I don't do that myself, but if you were to commission a full anime character you would be looking between $500 - $2000 depending on the quality and the artist. VR avatars are difficult to make and need a lot of time to get right

@beyounickvlog5285

4 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade ok.Thank you.

What happened if you export fbx animations like that? Is there still face animations?

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

Yeah! As long as you enable the Shape Key/morph checkbox when you export, your shape keys will be part of your animations in your fbx file

Would this also work on Lego facial expressions akin to The LEGO Movie?

@VertexArcade

3 ай бұрын

Yeah it could possibly work. You could have a mouth mesh that changes shapes, and this mouth mesh would need to be shrink-wrapped on to the Lego Head so that it curves. Then you could switch expressions using the shape key rig and it should work

Can the rig be transported in unreal engine and also works with this addon?

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

No, the addon is made for Blender. If you animate using the rig it'll keyframe the shape keys and those can be imported into Unreal, but the rig itself can't

@coreragestudios3430

5 ай бұрын

@@VertexArcade damn

can i export this animation in ue?

Is there any other software out there that has these inbuilt?! Like C4D, Maya, 3DS Max, etc?

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

No, this is a custom built setup for Blender. I've never used the other programs so you might be able to set it up but this driver and shape key method is Blender only

Porfavor, dime se puede en 3DsMax?? Y comoooo

Can you add phonemes so you can use the rig for speech as well as expression?

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

Yeah of course, you can add whatever you want, as long as the shape keys don't overlap too much

@mikeleonard805

5 ай бұрын

Thanks so much. I've been following you on twitter. Really enjoy you work. @@VertexArcade

can this be translated into unity or unreal?

Is that Gwen model available for download by any chance? no worries if it isn't!

@VertexArcade

5 ай бұрын

It's actually just the Fortnite Gwen model that I've made some tweaks to, it's very easy to find!

Animation is so hard. Is there anyway to do animation for beginners?

Great video, the technical part lost me a bit. Guess I need to thoroughly research drivers before attempting to touch this.

Unfortunately I tried mine but the shapekeys contradicts other shape keys when I try to combine it it

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

That sounds like your distance drivers aren't set up correctly. Just make sure that the distance driver uses the correct image and that the values are correct. At a distance of 0, the shape key should be on and a distance of 1 the shape key should be off

Is that Lois Noceda Lane for the example head mesh lmao

Is it possible to export all this system to Unreal Engine 5?

@VertexArcade

15 күн бұрын

All of the shape keys can be exported to Unreal, but the Drivers/Rig wouldn't work in Unreal. You would have to create your own setup in Unreal, with some sliders, options or do something similar with a cursor and detect the distance to an image and activate that shape key

this didnt work at all for me, there was no establishing link i could see between the object and the shape/face made wit hthe shape keys, did i miss something?

OK! But you don't explained how to do left/right parts of mimic separately.

@VertexArcade

6 ай бұрын

The left and right parts are tricky to do. It's the exact same process but this time we have a second Selector and and a second shape key, then we just add the drivers for this second shape key and the selector and it will control the other side of the face. It was too complicated to go over in this video

would this work on unreal engine also?