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How to make face rigs ( for beginners)


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  1. 1. Did you like it?

    • The tutorial was nicely presented and easy to follow along! Thanks!
    • Although I already know how to make a face rig, the tutorial was good.
    • Your tutorials are bad.. stop trying
    • I already knew how to make face rigs, and if anyone else wants to know how... they wouldn't have learnt from you. This tutorial sucked.
    • It was ok... you can improve next time though!
    • Ehh ... below average by a fair amount.
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  2. 2. What Shall I improve on Next time?

    • Formatting
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  3. 3. How would you rate the guide? 1-10

    • 1 - Terrible, the worst i've ever seen
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    • 2 - Extremely Poor
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    • 3 - Poor
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    • 4 - Below average, almost all people can do better.
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    • 5 - Average
    • 6 - Decent
    • 7 - Good
    • 8 - Great
    • 9 - Excellent
    • 10 - Perfect! The best I've seen.


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I have recently become interested in face rigs, and , although I 'm not very experienced I feel like I haven't contributed an awful lot to the MI community. So here it is, face rigs for beginners! This tutorial is for  those who are looking to use this guide to make their first face rig. Any questions you have comment below!

 

Step 1 : Finding The Right Tool

To make a face rig the first tool you need is a photo editing/paint tool. However, it can't be any paint tool... there is one requirement:

.It must save transparency, transparency allows you to load an file into MI (or any other programme for that matter) and have your chosen areas remain see through. This is essential.

 

Some tools you could use are:

Photoshop ( costs money, unless pirated)

Gimp ( Free and a generally useful tool)

Paint.net ( Another free and very useful tool)

Pixlr - ( Free , I have no experience with this tool , it was suggested by Tiedmes)

For this tutorial, I will be using paint.net.

 

 

Step 2: Editing the skin

Once you've got your paint tool open, you need the skin you want to edit (make sure, before you start editing, that you have a checkered grey and white background).

Select the eraser tool and edit out the eyes and the mouth, so that you can see the background through it. Once you're done , It should look like this (some people prefer a 2x2 eye size instead of the 1x2 eye size i'm using). Remember to save it! You'll need it again later!

 

Spoiler

xhk0jlx.png

 

 

Step 3: Loading it into MI

This is a simple step, it starts getting a bit more complicated in the next step.

.To load your rig into MI, simply spawn in a Steve ( or Alex ) into your project. Then, on the far right hand side of your mine - imator interface, you will see project properties. Click this and then click libary. Here you will see all the items in your project. Find the Steve you just spawned in and click on it, you should see a skin tab slightly below it. 

 

. Click this, then change the skin to the file that you just edited ( the one where you erased the eyes and the mouth). You should now have a weird looking character.. something like this : 

Spoiler

PzT6mW7.png

 

Step 4: Building

Ok, this is where it gets a bit harder... but if you follow these steps it should be easy.

You need to decide what part of the face you will edit first, I'm going to edit the eyes ; the simpler component. 

The eyes contain 3 items :

.the eye whites

.the pupils

. the eyebrows

 

. The obvious part to start with is the eye whites, for this, I just use a cube. Load one in from the crafting table and parent it to the head. If you like a neat timeline, you might want to create a folder called something like "Rig Parts."   Scale the cube down so that it covers both the eye sockets.

Spoiler

091xdj1.png

 

. Next, we'll do the pupils, like the eye whites, we'll be using a cube. Load it in, parent it like you did with the eye whites and scale it down. This time you may want to adjust it's depth as well. Once you've done one pupil you can easily duplicate it and move it other to the next eye. Great! We're almost done with the eyes.

 

Spoiler

4CUzwfj.png

 

Final part, the eyebrows! These are as simple as the eyes, and the exact same process. Eyebrows are usually about the same length as the eye sockets, you may want to take this into consideration. Like you did before, spawn in a cube and scale it down so that it is a thin rectangular shape. You may wish to angle it upwards slightly. Again, we can duplicate the one eyebrow to make two. This time however, you will need to change the rotation slightly.

 

Spoiler

AaeagDU.png

 

 

And that's it! You should now have a face rig complete with move-able pupils , eyebrows and I guess.. if for whatever reason you need to move them, eye whites. .

 

 

Step 4.5: The Mouth

The mouth is ( in my opinion ) the key part to any facial rig, not only can a good mouth rig indicate who's speaking, it can also show expressions. In my mouth rig I will be having 5 components, although, after the end of this tutorial you should hopefully be able to add more so that the mouth suits your needs. My components are:

.Mouthbox

.Teeth (Lower and Upper)

.Mouth top

.Mouth Bottom

.Mouth sides (left and right)

 

 

To start the mouth rig we're going to need to go back into the editing tool you used originally and open the skin with the mouth and eyes edited out. We will have to make the areas around the mouth the same colour, so that when we build the mouth itself, we can have it blend in naturally. So pick a colour (similar to the rest of the face) and basically.. give him a beard. Just paint all around his mouth. :D  Notice this in the picture (you may want to also make a note of the hex code so you can match the tone exactly in MI).

Spoiler

GZHzMt2.png

KLi0vUh.png

 

One you've done that, simply do as you did at the start of the tutorial. Go to libary > human > and change the skin to the file you just made.

 

 

Step 5 : Building the Mouth

To build the mouth I usually start with the lower and upper mouth. These are simply to rectangles the user can use to open and close the mouth. The size doesn't matter too much, as you can always resize it to your specific needs. The only scale value that really matters is the x, the other can be rough guesses as to how you will need it. Now, spawn in a rectangle and scale it so that it is almost the same length as the head and height value (Y or Z ) Covers about 1/8 of the mouth. Once it's been scaled match the tone of the cube, to the rest of the mouth. Next, copy it and mouth it upwards, out of sight, to form the upper mouth. 

Spoiler

x0TEJZs.png

 

Next, I will create the mouth box?? ( The red part you see when you open your mouth). This is pretty simple : a red cube that goes inside his head to form the back of the mouth. Once you have done this step, you should no longer be able to see the background through his mouth. Most mouth insides tend to be a dark red.

 

Spoiler

1xMM8tv.png

 

Great! The mouth is really beginning to take shape, the obvious place to go from here is the teeth. So that's what I'll make next. The lower and upper teeth are usually seperate, this gives the animator more freedom when he or she is using your rig. The teeth are simply two rectangles that are tall enough so that they can meet in the middle and long enough so that they can cover the whole length of the mouth. After doing one row of teeth, you can duplicate it to make the other row. Almost done! Just one more step! The mouth looks quite square in the pictures, I'm going to show you how to fix that.

Spoiler

S54LZ0P.png

 

The last step is making the mouth sides, these are two skin coloured rectangles that allow your character to expand and compress his mouth. Sadly, though, it's not quite that simple. I make my sides so that the character can smile easily. To do this, I rotate the rectangle at 45 degrees and re - scale it. This can get a tiny bit hard but after this... you're done! I find it easier to spawn in another cube and parent the two together. This forms a nice diagonal line. The last step is to duplicate the rectangle and simply rotate it so that it is symmetrical on both sides. Then you're done! You're face rig will most likely look a lot better than mine as I need to go for dinner now... so I kinda rushed the end. Here's the finished product : YIT1OJv.png

 

 

 

Also, this is my first MI tutorial so please take the time to fill out the poll and comment any advice you have! Hope you enjoyed!

If you did find this helpful , why not post your finished product below? I'd be interested to see what you come up with!

Edited by iFallOffStuff
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1 minute ago, BAC0NB0Y said:

@Pancakes Hero! The tutorial does not suck. He's going through the basics, not the advanced stuff. I saw what you voted you little...

it was meant like, its to much to read. and yes i didint read it til the end :c now i just saw the ends of if. i just wanted to press i already know this... but nvm

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1 minute ago, Pancakes Hero! said:

it was meant like, its to much to read. and yes i didint read it til the end :c now i just saw the ends of if. i just wanted to press i already know this... but nvm

I wanted to go for a long tutorial as I wanted to make sure I was clear enough, but I do agree with you.. it's long. Not necessarily too long ( I think). 

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Just now, Pancakes Hero! said:

R.I.P. lazy peoples like me.

:P I'd glance over an article too if I already knew how to do what was being explained.

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Just now, -StickyMations- said:

When I saw this post, I thought it was going to be another of those posts you make asking questions...

But this really surprised me! This post will be very helpful for any newbie out there. Thanks dude! :thumbsup:

1+ Follower

Oo thanks :D My first follower ( I think) ... 

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1 minute ago, Tiedemies1 said:

Heres one tool i use the most, because its free and (when you get to used to it) is easy to use:

https://pixlr.com/editor/

Thought sometimes its kinda annoying, its free and no downloads needed. :thumbsup:

Okay thanks, I'll add it into the post!

13 minutes ago, Slime said:

Not Bad. If you need ANYTHING rig wise, just ask me or some other people, and we might be able to help.

Okay thanks, one question I do have is:

Some rigs will have things like bendable eyebrows ( like Mr. Cat's recent rig) are these eyebrows just re - scaled re - coloured body parts? (such as arms). I don't know how these work, never downloaded a rig like that. Too complicated for me :P 

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5 minutes ago, iFallOffStuff said:

Okay thanks, I'll add it into the post!

Okay thanks, one question I do have is:

Some rigs will have things like bendable eyebrows ( like Mr. Cat's recent rig) are these eyebrows just re - scaled re - coloured body parts? (such as arms). I don't know how these work, never downloaded a rig like that. Too complicated for me :P 

Yes, they are. I cant give exact scale numbers for it, but i can say that if there is someway i could contact you, i might be able to help more.

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1 minute ago, Slime said:

Yes, they are. I cant give exact scale numbers for it, but i can say that if there is someway i could contact you, i might be able to help more.

Okay , probably won't try it now.. I've completed very few projects in mine - imator. I'll wait till i'm a bit more experienced :)  But thanks for the offer! 

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1 minute ago, iFallOffStuff said:

Okay , probably won't try it now.. I've completed very few projects in mine - imator. I'll wait till i'm a bit more experienced :)  But thanks for the offer! 

I meant with the rig question, but ok.

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Ok, I'm not going to get all over you about how basic it is, because I understand you're doing basics. More advanced would be making the pupils pixel-sized, adding eyelids, and a top and bottom for the mouth.

You should really just make a video. That's alot easier for people to follow when they can see you doing it.

Also, you should expand the poll a little bit. I just want to say that it would be a little hard to follow (because it's not a video). I feel mean saying it sucked, because it was actually decent. You should have a hater "this stupid tutorial was full of idiocy get a life" version for people like will-not-name, and a polite "it's decent, but not exactly great" version for people like me, so we can give our opinion without feeling like haters (unless we are haters).

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16 hours ago, Astro Animations said:

Ok, I'm not going to get all over you about how basic it is, because I understand you're doing basics. More advanced would be making the pupils pixel-sized, adding eyelids, and a top and bottom for the mouth.

You should really just make a video. That's alot easier for people to follow when they can see you doing it.

Also, you should expand the poll a little bit. I just want to say that it would be a little hard to follow (because it's not a video). I feel mean saying it sucked, because it was actually decent. You should have a hater "this stupid tutorial was full of idiocy get a life" version for people like will-not-name, and a polite "it's decent, but not exactly great" version for people like me, so we can give our opinion without feeling like haters (unless we are haters).

Ok! I'll expand the poll now! 

Also I have a few reasons of why not to do a video:

I doubt I've started puberty yet and people like that get a decent amount of hate on the internet.

Some people prefer a written guide for different reasons.

 

 

EDIT : Updated the poll , I also added a few more questions!

Edited by iFallOffStuff
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3 hours ago, iFallOffStuff said:

Ok! I'll expand the poll now! 

Also I have a few reasons of why not to do a video:

I doubt I've started puberty yet and people like that get a decent amount of hate on the internet.

Some people prefer a written guide for different reasons.

 

 

EDIT : Updated the poll , I also added a few more questions!

you don't have to use your voice, you can just use subtitles.

and most people prefer videos, maybe not all, but most.

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