Animating a texture mapped face

[charlotte-chan]

Not sure if this should be posted here or in Animating.

I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but I wanted to have the face of my character as a texture and I wanted to somehow animate this so I can animate the character expressions and such.

Sorry if that's worded badly, I hope someone will understand and help me out here ;D

[rray]

What could work is if make a duplicate of the mesh, delete the original UVs and use Gator to transfer them back to the old one. You could now keep Gator "live" and animate (shape/bones) the duplicate.

I'm assuming here you're intentionally going for the "texture animated" look, because otherwise this method would be a pointless detour x-D

[charlotte-chan]

I kinda wanted to swap the texture from one to another to make it animated. If that even possible? rather than actually move the texture around? ^^; my bad explaining. Also I've never used a gator before XD;

[charlotte-chan]

I found how to layer textures, but is there anyway to animate those perimeters?


Attached screenshot, Pictures are random just for experimenting not what I actually want to animate lol.

[mattmos]

You could either use a mix8colors node to switch between different textures, or a more complex (but maybe neater overall) route would be to create a texture with all your expressions and animate the uvs so that they look at different areas.

[Draise]

Maybe have multiple heads with a switch that hides and shows whatever you need when needed. They all are rigged the same way, just copied with a different texture. Then using a hide/switch, the heads will magically hide then show the switched head with the new texture.

Or you can do the same with just a texture overlay object deformed to the head geometry, with an transparent mask. Again, using a show/hide switch, you can animate it easily enough.

Or you can also use an image sequences, so you can technically animate the face texture elsewhere in say.. Animestudio with automatic lipsync or something like that then import it to your 3D geometry to the final render.

[charlotte-chan]

Or you can do the same with just a texture overlay object deformed to the head geometry, with an transparent mask. Again, using a show/hide switch, you can animate it easily enough.

Or you can also use an image sequences, so you can technically animate the face texture elsewhere in say.. Animestudio with automatic lipsync or something like that then import it to your 3D geometry to the final render.

I was planning on doing it with a texture overlay like you suggest above but I wasn't sure how to do it, would you be able to explain a bit more or provide me with a tutorial.

Also the image sequence idea sounds very good, but I'm not sure how to import it to my 3D geometry, would you be able to tell me how, thanks =]

[Draise]

Here you go, an idea, it's a Surface Deformer operator or here.


Once you have say, a grid plastered and deformed to the characters face, you can then set a UV to it, create a texture with an alpha mask (extracted from a PNG sequence with alpha, for example) and then link the texture to the shader by selecting the image sequence (a single file with a frame range in the file browser).

You can alternatively apply a second UV to your head and use the same method above , except you plaster the texture onto the other shader using the second UV and a mix2colors node with two illumation nodes and the extracted alpha mask from the image sequence.

To extract alpha from images with alpha, you need the Picker node.

All this is done in the Render Tree viewer.

[charlotte-chan]

You could either use a mix8colors node to switch between different textures, or a more complex (but maybe neater overall) route would be to create a texture with all your expressions and animate the uvs so that they look at different areas.

Would you be able to explain how to do the mix8colour method please

Here you go, an idea, it's a Surface Deformer operator or here.


Once you have say, a grid plastered and deformed to the characters face, you can then set a UV to it, create a texture with an alpha mask (extracted from a PNG sequence with alpha, for example) and then link the texture to the shader by selecting the image sequence (a single file with a frame range in the file browser).

You can alternatively apply a second UV to your head and use the same method above , except you plaster the texture onto the other shader using the second UV and a mix2colors node with two illumation nodes and the extracted alpha mask from the image sequence.

To extract alpha from images with alpha, you need the Picker node.

All this is done in the Render Tree viewer.

Thanks, I'll give this a try. I'm a newbie when it comes to anything other than using the basic options though ^^;

[rray]

You can't set keyframes in the layer editor directly, but you can set them in the shader's property page. It has sliders controlling the same parameters, only arranged differtlenty, not in a user friendly "photoshop" layer way.

[charlotte-chan]

You can't set keyframes in the layer editor directly, but you can set them in the shader's property page. It has sliders controlling the same parameters, only arranged differtlenty, not in a user friendly "photoshop" layer way.

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH, this makes it so easy its pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

Sorry for the rant on twitter ^^; Pretty stressed. Our university is not really giving anyone the support they need even though its just over a month until our deadline v__v;;;

Thanks for the help guys sorry for being a pain >~<;

[rray]

dont worry no pain

[mattmos]

For animating with layers there is this tutorial (if you can ignore the music!): https://vimeo.com/11546395

For a better approach (imho) using the fxtree will give you preview textures in the viewport so you can see what you're animating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGNNRuFPc1k though this is a little more involved.

By suggesting the mix8colors node I was suggesting plugging different images (facial expressions) into each input, and using the mixer to switch between them by animating the weight of each input. This would be slow though, unless you could connect the weights to a custom parameter set to make it faster to animate.

[charlotte-chan]

You can't set keyframes in the layer editor directly, but you can set them in the shader's property page. It has sliders controlling the same parameters, only arranged differtlenty, not in a user friendly "photoshop" layer way.

Hi guys, I got it set up at rray suggested, however when my characters move the textured faces don't move with it. Is there a way to lock the textures to the face so they move with the character?
Thanks~