Hey everyone,

Just curious how you'd, for example, setup the box control for the upper lip. In typical Osipa style. moving the control up would move the entire lip up, then moving left would keep the upper left lip up, while setting the right side back to zero. Down position works the same where moving the control straight down moves the entire lip down, moving it side to side sets one side back to neutral position.

How are you achieving this with the FM box control setup? I've been able to do it in the past by manually setting SDKs on the buffer, but that's pretty time consuming. I could, of course, setup single axis controls for each side of the upper lip, but then that's extra controls I might not want/need.

If you're not setting it up like that, where moving side to side cancels out the opposite side, what poses are you using when the control is moved along the x axis?

Thanks!
Jason

Hi Jason,

I'm not sure I understand the problem....it shouldn't be difficult to set up a box control system precisely as you describe it using the TFM tools. Why do you need SDKs?

--Raf

Hi Raf,

Perhaps I'm missing something simple. I'll try another example from Osipa's rig.

For a mouth emotion box control, moving the control up moves both sides of the mouth into a smile position. Moving the control right after this(so it's at 1,1) would make it so only the right side is smiling, and the left is back to neutral position. Going down with the control(0,-1) would make both sides frown, while going to (1,-1) would make just the right side frown.

Is that something I can setup using FM? Osipa uses expressions to do it if I remember correctly. I've made it work in past rigs using sdks as well, though they go into negative values when cancelling out one side.

Anyway, I actually don't setup my mouth that way, as I prefer using the mouth corner controls like the FM provides. I'm moreso just curious if it's possible to set it up like Osipa does.

Another question, if you don't mind, is does your studio use the box controls as they are created by the FM? I end up adding and deleting a few to get what I want, but I always like to see how other people work. I realize you guys are super busy with production work and other goodies, but at some point it would be nice to have the box controls setup in your downloadable demo file to see what you use/suggest.

Thanks Raf and crew for the great products and support!
Jason

Hi,

I had the same issue as you. My solution was to rotate the box control 45 degrees making a diamond shape. then you apply the left side of the face to one axis and the right side of the face to the opposing axis. It isn't the best solution but it works as a decent work around.

You certainly don't have to stick to the box pose arrangement you provide--you can use TFM to set up any combination of box poses you want, including ones exactly like those that Jason Osipa uses, and no expressions or SDKs are needed. The box control creation toolkit takes care of that.

--Raf

I'm pretty sure there is a way to define this, but I'm not sure how..

I'd like to define each corner of the control box to a different "face feature" So it would look something like this..


---------------------------------------------------------------------
(-1,1)Right Smile (0,1)Both Smile (1,1)Left Smile


(-1,0)Default (0,0)Default (1,0)Default


(-1,-1)Right Frown (0,-1)Both Frown (1,-1)Left Frown

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Or another one:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(-1,1)EE Shape (0,1)EE/OO Mixed (1,1)OO Shape


(-1,0)Default (0,0)Default (1,0)OO/UU Mixed


(-1,-1)SH Shape (0,-1)SH/UU Mixed (1,-1)UU Shape

----------------------------------------------------------------------



How would I achieve this?

Thanks in advance!

I don't think there's anyway to do what you want using the box controls. They work using driven keys, and driven keys are an inherently one dimensional thing. This means you can only define poses one either side of a particular axis, and moving the box control to a corner will cause it to combine both poses from the x and y axes together.

If you're feeling adventurous, though, you could try rigging up the box controls to work in that manner yourself, though I think that would require somehow using bilinear interpolation (or something like it) to figure out what poses are being blended together. But all defining a box control does is create a driven key with the box control as the driver and the _boxBuffer node for a control as the driven. (The _boxBuffer nodes are always the first parent of any face control.) If you wanted to rig the box controls up to the boxBuffer nodes yourself in some kind of specialized manner like you described then that would work fine.

oh okay! Cool thanks! Thanks for the quick response.

Unfortunately, I'm not that good with scripting to figure out how to create a complex structure like that, lol. (I'm only an animator by profession! lol).

If you guys are interested, maybe this can be something to be added in the new version fo the face machine. If you get that book 'Stop Staring' (Make sure its revision 2, and not the original... comes with a CD) by Jason Osipia, he explains and does it with his scripts. Maybe if you were to take a look at how he rig's his box control, then you can get an idea on how to integrate that with the next Face Machine? =)

Just a thought!

Box controls that work like that are a cool idea, and thanks for recommending an actual spot to find a technique for doing it. We very well might add it to future version of our products!

Cool! looking forward to it =)

Spam?