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

@@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

@@SymbolCymbals2356 sorry, I did have that backwards

+1

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

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.

try Face it addon

Thank you!

it really is.

Yeah, that's a valid approach!

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

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

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

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

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

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. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aplpgqWC0Z20kmw.htmlsi=68uqAKIyMky01dcy&t=695

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...)

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

@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

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

Yeah, the character with black hair and orange eyes is my own character, but the one after that is the Fortnite model of Gwen from the Spider-verse movies

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

thank you!@@VertexArcade

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

Thanks a lot!@@VertexArcade

What do you mean by smoothing?

14:25:@@VertexArcade

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

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

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

@@VertexArcade ty!

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

​@@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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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