This tutorials covers how to create a more advanced type of facial rig, showing you how to use the “stretch to” constraint to give the face a more fluid way of animating. The “stretch to” is great for things like lips and eyelids (which is shown in this tutorial); in addition, I show you how to make the eyelids “stick” to the eyeball surface, so there’s no unwanted gap between the two while animating.
Note: we do apologize for the heavy keyboard input, hopefully this will be fixed in later tutorials.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Support the site – Download includes:
- 1280×720 .mov Video
- .blend file at the state of the tutorial
Subscribe to our Blender RSS Feed to receive our latest articles and education from Blender Cookie.
72 Comments
Really cool stuff, I’m definitely using this technique.
Hi. Great tutorial – thanks for creating it. one thing – I found the noise of your keyboard very intrusive though.
thanks, i’ll keep that in mind for next time
I’m sure this is a great tutorial but I ended up closing it out early on because I was having a lot of difficulty understanding you. Many times your voice goes low and almost growly so as to render it near a mumble. This made the tutorial hard to follow for me.
I would like to learn what you are showing, but I just can’t follow what you are saying.
sorry about that, i’ll try to speak more clearly
I have to disagree here.
I personally love your mumbling. It’s an integral part of the charm of all your tutorials. Please keep it up!
This is one of the more thorough and complete tutorials for start-off facial rigging. I’ve had a hard time getting a foothold on armature techniques, but this works really well.
Simply awesome! Been waiting for a tutorial like this. Just curious, how can I add controllers and sliders to the armature so you don’t manually have to go into edit mode and move around the control points individually? Maybe for another tutorial?
guess i don’t understand your question. all the control points were moved around in pose mode, not edit mode, if that’s what you mean
Just use an action constraint.
Ah I see what you’re saying now. Yes, you could create an action for each facial expression/pose and then use the NLA editor to set them up.
That is so cool that you’re on the team now, David! I have watched a lot of your videos on Youtube.
Great tut. Put your mike on a piece of foam rubber at least 1/4 inch thick. Mike noise gone. If no foam rubber then use a kitchen hot pad. Anything like that to dampen the noise of the desk. Good work on the tut. I hope more to come.
thanks for the tip
yay a face rig tut! thats awesome
also awesome that its by a new blendercookie instructor!
really helpful tutorial and very concise…the keyboard is not too loud or anything in my opinion and thats not so important anyway…
really love the funny 1 eyed being…reminds me of the vorticons from commander keen,
Thanks for contributing to this site and the community!!!
Best regards
Super sweet! Please fix audio, tho (no clicking/typing, clearer sound for voice.) How would you add teeth to facial rig?!
for teeth, i set the top teeth to be weight-painted to the head bone, and the bottom teeth to be weight-painted to the jaw bone.
To add bones. on irregular surface ,use Etch-a-ton with snapping.
Second, how to solve a “Shape key issue”? I mean ,when I have a shape key’s, than bones don’t follow the mesh. And that’s occurs bad deformation’s (especially in this, stretch to, lips technique).
this particular technique is directed at not having shapekeys at all, and controlling everything with the armature
Thanks!!! You made my day, and just in time for my new project.
any future versions planned, for pose load save, quick expressions for reuseablity will help , huge thanks for this one, it really explains well and clear things out
Even more ironic than E.T. is SETI
which is an organization keeping an eye out for E.T. through radio waves and such.
S.E.T.I
google it
lol hilarious!
You could use the shrinkwrap modifier to get the eyelid controls to move along the surface of the eye.
yes that would probably work, but i think it would be a bit overkill, as you’d have to add the modifier, paint the weights for the edge of the eyelid, and so on and so forth. this way is a little quicker/easier.
Sorry no, I didn’t mean the modifier I meant the shrinkwrap constraint. Applied to the eyelid control bones.
ah i gotcha. honestly i didn’t know about that constraint. more than one way to milk a duck, apparently
thanks for the tip
Great tutorial!!! Thanks
I’m sitting here with what my family calls a “Blender hangover” from another late night. You know that scene at the end of The Incredibles where the kid on the trike yells “that was AMAZING!”. Well, that’s what’s going on inside my head. And to give you a bit of perspective, I’m 53 years old and I’ve worked on supercomputers, missiles, the Space Shuttle, cardiac pacemakers, industrial robots, and the telecommunications network; it takes A LOT to put me back on that tricycle. Being able to watch a master craftsman work, while he’s slowing down enough for me to understand and taking the effort to explain every step, is one of the few ways left to get a “wow!” out of me.
Both your content and the technical quality of this tutorial were superb (I have no idea what the people complaining about the audio were talking about – I had no problem hearing it and I’ve got old ears). Your pacing was excellent (given the fact that I was able to hit the spacebar and go back if I needed to). Please don’t change your screen resolution – it’s high enough to get the information content, but low enough to allow the recording to be smooth. I particularly appreciate the fact that you explicitly describe your keyboard shortcuts as you’re using them – many tutorials assume the readers are familiar with the shortcuts. I also appreciate the fact that you explain not only what you’re doing, but WHY.
Please, please PLEASE keep up the good work, your tutorials are a lifeline – I’ve been tinkering with Blender for a couple of years, off and on, and thanks you you, I’m finally staring to feel like I’m able to do useful stuff with it.
My only complaint about your tutorials is that I haven’t been able to get the teddy bear video to run, but I think that’s my computer.
By the way, if you’re looking for topics, softbody hair would be great.
thank! good tutorial!
I’t possible export the rigg or only bones with skin to other program(Max,Maya or MotionBuilder)?
Your video is amazing! For getting the concept down, it’s pretty effective.
However, your rigging is a little bit sloppy. For instance, a lot of the bones aren’t aligned properly, eg: the stretch bones were created at the bone centers, not at the bone roots. The stretch bones also should be hinged. I noticed that some of the rig is not in the rest pose when all constraints are on, this can be seen as the model moves when you add the armature modifier. This should NOT happen. The jaw bone should be weight painted properly. You should be using action constraints to move the lip controls, not a simple parent. And finally, the rig isn’t very polished. I would like to see someone [i]plan[/i] a rig, and pick intuitive controls, rather than just show some flashy techniques. A polished rig would also have intuitive bone colors and draw shapes.
But overall, I complain to much. It is really a good video!
I whould have to disagree on a couple of points having seen simular setups in XSI and Maya before…
#1 the whole point of this type of rigg is to avoid having to over work the character with weight painting…
that is to let more points and control points fall where they may and let the computer do the painting for you as much as possable…
#2 with that in mind… the Jaw bone should be weighted to nothing… but only be a controler for the lip bones…
goto this thread to see an expert giving a tutorial on the ideas presented here…
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=39214
you will have to down load his videos to whatch them…
That tut is for Soft Image. Totally different workflow, though you might get Blender to use some of those methods. It looks old, too. You might be able to array the control points with dupliverts.
For the eyes tou can better use shapekey drivers…
Hello.
I have work with Blender for about a year and I like it very much. My gool is to make better animated cartoons.
I have just try out David Wards tutorial how to rig a face with boons. And also Jonathan Williams tutorials. Easy to understand.
This i a better way for me to learn. I am redy to pay for this, but before I doing this I need som answers on few questions.
I think it is better if we can talk trough mail.
I am running a iMac Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and use Blender 49.b. I need to know how I can make the tutorials bigger and better quality.
My Blender skills is not so good. You can take a look at my Vimeoalbum.http://vimeo.com/user504962
Sorry, my english is not so good.
Thanks in advance.
Spender
@Spender
We talked on e-mail already but I wanted to thank you for nudging us, it was an issue on our end and the video quality above should be quite a bit better for all!
/game on.
Hi i was wachting your tutorial but i have a problem , in the part that create the first bone of the mouth
-¿ how can you scale it in the Y axis ?
- i was trying but i can’t
Been trying all day, but I wasn’t able to finish watching as it stops loading. Cleared my cache and all but nothing.
Have you tried watching it in a different browser?
Also, are you able to watch other videos on Vimeo fully?
Something you might try is watching the Vimeo version here: http://vimeo.com/7630741 rather than the embeddd version.
I could watch Vimeo videos if its shorter (less than 10 minutes). Been able to watch others longer though with lower resolution (around 20min).
Could this be due to session handling of videos from Vimeo? I only have 512 kilobit/sec (getting a maximum 64KiloByte/sec of download). I’m guessing it kills my session after some hours long of loading.
Hello, your tutorial ar very good and easy to follow, but I got stucked with stretch To. I grab with G and bones (armatures) dont follow with.
Pleac Can you advice me how to do
Thanks in advance
Here is my blendfile http://pasteall.org/blend/774
[IMG]http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af353/Spender19/Skrmavbild2009-12-02kl101202.png[/IMG]
Sorry I give you wrong Blendfile. Here is a new one.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/1261
Well , I STILL think this is an excellent tutorial, but I’m having some problems with the practical use of the armature; it seems that when the armature is parented, the vertex groups created for the lip stretchers extend way too far; the lower lip groups extend down into the neck, down to where the “heat” of the shoulder bones becomes predominant, but the vertex groups for the upper lips extend up into the lower eyelids and halfway across the head. Every time my character frowns, half his face slides down (kinda like a trip to the dentist in Hell must look like).
I’ve tried manually editing the vertex groups, but there’s no proportional falloff in the resulting deformation – you get very sharp edged groups of vertices moving around, and the vertices removed from the groups go to strange and unusual places (I found one in the shower this morning).
If there’s some way to turn down the “heat” from individual bones, I haven’t discovered it yet. I’ve tried experimenting with the individual bone distance and weight settings prior to parenting, but this doesn’t seem to help much. I’m thinking that I might need to split the face armature off from the body rig and parent it using envelopes, but I suspect this will undo the flexibility of the B-Bone segments. Another option might be to set up a ring of “guard bones” around the mouth; these would be deform bones but would remain stationary.
One other concern I have about this technique is that I’m not sure I can combine facial expressions and phoneme positions into a pose library the way I can by combining shape keys. I’m wondering if I might be able to use this rig to create shape keys, then disable the bone deformations (this can be done simply by removing all of the vertices from the groups assigned to the bones).
you can adjust the weight settings of the vertex groups by using the “weight paint” mode, as i demonstrate at about 32:35. the weight paint mode has the gradual proportional falloff you were looking for when editing the vertex groups
as far as the library of shape keys, you can sort of do that using the “action” constraint (which honestly i haven’t really used at all yet).
I have to say – really nice tutorial, thanks a lot. And I personally find the keyboard noise helpful for the *rare* occasion that you don’t verbally announce that you are using a keyboard shortcut you can at least hear what’s going on. Also, i too quite enjoy the mumbling.
I’m trying to do this in 2.50 but when I add the stretch constraint to a controller bone, the whole thing goes crazy. Any help?
Hey Dave! I am a Brazilian fan of you.
Thank you for your tutorials, I’m learning a lot from you. I think its the best tutorials, and easy to follow.
About your mumbling, that makes the tutorial so fun and relaxed, then I do not get bored. Please keep it up
I just started using Blender and really like v2.5 but have issue with parenting the bones (Eyeball & EyeballHolder) when i hit CTRL + P i only get the option for [Connected] and i can not seem to find anyway to [Keep Offset]…any suggestions?
When stretching armature/bone be sure to only have the end(ball) selected !
OK I found the answer to my Question it was in relations within the object tab of the properties window. Not in the bone constraints, bone or object data tabs.
This looks like a good technique but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Im trying to rig a raving rabbid model and the most important part is the mouth, but every time I try to rig it the bones are way too big and they stretch to all the wrong places. Does anybody know what may be the problem, or how I may fix this?
If you’re visualizing the stretcher bones as B-Bones, you can scale the length of the bone by selecting the head and moving it towards the other end (”g-z” if the bone is vertical). You can scale down the cross-section of the bone by selecting the bone “body” and pressing Alt-S. All of this is in Edit mode, of course.
As for the other issue, I’ve noticed that there’s a lack of control over the non-parented end of the bone, and a big deflection on one side can cause unsymetrical deformations on the other side, along with unexpected movements at the “free” end. This is pretty cool for eyebrows, but it’s a real problem for lips or eyelids. I’ve been experimenting with setting up the stretchers as two separete chains going out from the center and then parenting both chains to the center control bone. Also, I’ve found that partenting the rig to the mesh using envelopes rather than bone heat gives me better control, but my weight painting skills are pretty awful.
thanks that really cleared some things up. I still don’t understand how to use envelopes though…
Thank you for this tutorial. It will definitively be very useful for me …
Meri beaucoup !
Peek-a-boo, me again! (you must get so tired of me by now xD) I’ve been trying the lip stretching technique on a DBZ character I’m working on, but I’m facing the same issues that talentlessHack and Jahovagis are memtioning. Could you please take a quick look at it?
Screenshot: http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/yugifan220/MouthStretchProblem.png
Thanks in advance,
-Patrick
looks like you might need to recalculate the bone roll. go into edit mode, select your “stretch” bones, and press “ctrl+n”, and choose “clear roll (z axis up).” see if that helps any.
Nope, already did that, but to no avail =/
hey everybody,
I have massiv problems with the set up of the stretch to constrains.
If I grab the first controller of the bone chain the complete chain becomes deformed and increses/ decreases its volumina. The last bone exeds/ dont reach to his target stretch-to-controller.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/2019
advises would be extreamly helpfull.
I have the same problem as Patrick. Help? Anyone?
I work’d it around. Duplicate bottom lip/lid to upper then do ctrl+n in edit mode. It work’d for me
I think it has somethink to do with X-axis mirro, I had it accidentally on in some poit of modelin.
Excuse me Rebepoi.
It actually really work for you?
no unwanted over exeeding deformations of the bones at the end of the chain?
Every bone is remaining at his stretch to constrain target exactly at every time?
No matter how much you move the stratch conrol bones?
If this is so please, please, please post your so far done experiment, work or whatever.
@ Metto
sry, I was too quick with my reply there… I thought it work’d until I re-aranged them again in wanted locations
@talentlessHack
@Jahovagis
@Patrick
@Meersohn
gentleman, gentleman
You all havent done anything wrong the way you armature work is the way it is supposed to.
Yesterday i downloaded the the dokumentary file and suprise, suprise this file have the same
problems with exeeding aiming controlls unloved deformation etc.
Its only a shame that answering this question costed me 4 bugs instead of only one comment of the author.
pfff…
ah, sorry i haven’t been watching the comments on here very closely
@metto: i believe your problem may be solved by setting all the “stretch” bones to “hinge”. if you’ll scroll up about half-way, you’ll see a post by “MTracer” who sort of explains what should be fixed. sorry for the confusion 
Thank you so much.
Really.
With this little “hing” thins you managed to turn my world upset down.
Ok not really but quiete. Thank you very much.
glad that fixed your problem
Thanks for the great tutorial on Rigging in Blender…
I didn’t get to see the whole thing, as I am relegated to dial-up in my area, but what I did see had some neat pointers and details that I’ve been trying to find for some time now. Nice to see tutorials that offer more than the basic info in the manual.
Is there anyway of downloading these videos? I’d really like to get them at work and bring them home to watch them complete.
I enjoyed this (and all the BlenderCookie tuts) but I really felt it totally collapsed at the end. We went through such a very tedious process of adding bones and segmented/stretchy connectors, placing it all and naming it just so. Then, it seems like ALL the magic happened in the last 2 seconds when the ‘Create from Bone Heap’ (or something) magic happened, and the brief flash into weight painting (I think it was called).
Seems like a LOT more effort needed to be spent on explaining that magic 1 menu click, and perhaps a bit of actual time spent on the weight painting.
You really should spend some time watching Apollos on the Blender Underground, or maybe involve him in this site. His tutorials are amazingly precise and remarkably complete. The big difference is when I finish one your videos (this one at least) I think; wow, he’s so good. But when I finish one of his, I think; wow, he’s so good, and maybe I can also.
would put this video in version 2.5 and with quality
better?
thx
I agree with Kold on putting it in 2.5. I am starting to get the concept of that interface, but going between the two really messes me up.
That sounds like it may be a bandwidth issue. Have you tried turning off HD?