iClone 8 & CC4 Tutorial - Introduction to Edit Facial & Face Key

hi folks this tutorial will demonstrate the great new features shared between character creator 4 and iclone 8's edit facial and face key tool sets starting here in cc4 and previewing one of the many stock idle animations which ship with the program this is good but i want to see what the updated edit facial tools have to offer so the first thing is to go to the avatar's modifier animation panel and open up edit facial from there now the first thing to notice is that the currently loaded facial profile which means the expression set which the avatar is using is shown here as cc4 extended and navigating through to profiles in the content panel you can load this new extended profile all the smaller standard set or various custom as well as legacy profiles from here it's important to be aware that different profiles will change which tools are available on the edit facial panel and since extended and extended custom profiles include more expressions these will enable more edit facial controls so with the extended profile loaded into the avatar let's take an initial look around the edit facial interface this includes an updated muscle panel with general full face as well as more specific eye mouth and tongue interfaces which provide easy ways to focus in on facial areas with the new cc4 profiles loaded you'll also find an updated expression library with additional expressions in a simplified easier to navigate folder structure next the modify panel provides access to sliders for all available facial expressions you might use the search bar or simply navigate the various folders to find particular expressions as well as see what's active in the currently used folder here i'll go through the controls in more detail so back to the muscle panel full face ui and you'll see head controls here at the top left whilst the facial area gives access to all of the primary facial expressions to use a particular control just select it and then click and drag either on the feature or in the space around the facial area to drive it with the mouse you can also right double click on a selected feature to reset the individual control to zero or use the main reset button to reset all currently active controls to deselect the control simply left click on it again or to deselect all left double click in the surrounding area or use the eraser tool at the bottom left next choose symmetrical selection to select both sides of the face at once this will save a lot of time when building up expressions and of course you can always zero a particular part by left double clicking on it and to use multiple controls at once simply add more selections now edit facial allows you to add as many controls as you wish but it's important to bear in mind that this tool set is for control posing of facial expressions so it's really worth testing and getting a feel of how particular controls work before adding them together selecting and using particular controls like this is one thing but what about fine-tuning the controls themselves i'm rolling the character's eyes around here and some users might want to be able to push the extent so that they roll more extremely the global expressiveness slider at the top of the ui allows you to do just that to increase or lower extents so that the same mouse motion will drive the expression further or not so far depending on the slider setting there's also a sensitivity slider which is specific to the muscle panel and this allows you to dampen down or speed up the response of the expressions to the mouse motion now expressiveness can be applied to all aspects of edit facial to control strength and in iclone you'll find that this is a key frameable property while sensitivity is a mouse control specific to using the muscle panel but back with default slider values i'm continuing now to demonstrate some of the many expression controls available on the full face muscle panel ui and this really is something for the user to explore to try out different combinations and different directional mouse controls to see just how expressions can be posed like this and with the new extended facial profile you'll also find new controls for both the ears and the neck moving now to the eye focus muscle panel ui this provides a close-up view of the upper face area and add some new very subtle controls for pupil dilation and contraction as well as eyelash angles which can be really useful for fine-tuning eye poses here in cc and eye animation in icloud you'll see that the main eyebrow eye and cheek controls are also available here which really does make it easier to focus on controlling the whole of the upper face as well as to switch between different areas of focus next we come to the most advanced edit facial muscle panel which provides mouth focus this also replicates many of the controls available for the lower face on the general full face ui with some additions to make the most of cc4's new extended profile expression set you'll find that the primary lip control can be used to drive any of the various mouth shapes shown as mouth type thumbnails above the lower face shape so when selected the mouth type will determine the shape which is produced when the lip control is driven by the mouse this provides access to many different lip shapes not only funnel and pucker but roll in roll out push pull mouth press and mouth blow to the right of the mouth type thumbnail buttons you'll also notice a part control this adds further granularity to the available lip shapes where depending on the selected mouth type the lips control will be split into its available parts for independent use press and blow split into two parts right and left whilst all other shapes provide access to four separate quarters and these controls provide many possibilities for different individualized lip shape combinations but just as with the ifocus ui the mouth ui also provides standard controls for this region of the face so as well as the more advanced adjustments you can also fine tune the lower face more generally so you can control everything from the jaw to the nose tip on the mouth focused ui it has the same controls as the full face ui just with additions for more detail within this area and finally for the mouth ui as well as more advanced lip controls from the two buttons on the left it also provides access to the special form of mouth closure designed to be used during jaw open which can be used to enhance many different expressions as well as to a combination of jaw translation to the side as well as front and back along with up and down with mouth closed next moving on to the tongue focus ui and it's important to be aware that in order to show the tongue the character's jaw needs to be opened first now with jaw opened the most fundamental controls to bring the tongue out are the two central areas at the top of the tongue directly below the upper lip the top control will push the tongue back and forwards whilst the control below that will move it up and down as well as right and left the remaining controls drive the tongue rolling as well as the tongue tip and as well as control for tongue cheek bulging at the upper right and left side of the tongue you'll also find an additional tongue scale control which can be used for general adjustment as well as exaggerated and cartoon style tongue effects now as you can see the tongue operates independently from the rest of the face so it's easy to put it in unnatural positions and have it cut through the mesh around the mouth but of course you can always reset and readjust to get the combination you're looking for this completes the section on the new muscle panel i hope you can see that there's a lot more potential with this updated approach and the new cc4 extended facial profile next we'll take a look at the expression library updates the biggest change you'll notice when using cc4 facial profiles is that each emotion folder such as happy or sad contains many more facial expressions making it simpler and faster to apply them than before so the trick is to simply select a folder from the expression style drop down and then single click on any expression to apply it to the current model the expression library provides by far the fastest way to apply a facial expression to a character either for static posing here in cc or for animation in iclone and quickly applying different expressions is a great way to test a character to see how well the face will work for animation and of course you can always combine adjustments from the muscle panel as well as modify sliders with these expressions to create the specific effect you're aiming for and you'll find within each emotion folder a general structure whereby expressions labeled a are less extreme mouth-closed versions whilst expressions labeled b are offset to either the left or the right side of the face those labeled c are generally lips open but with the jaw closed and those labeled d are the more extreme expressions with jaw open this classification can be helpful when using the expressions during and between sections of lip sync over in iclone now as well as emotion expressions of course the library also provides access to the tongue and this is a great way to apply tongue expressions quickly before further fine-tuning using the muscle panel or modify sliders and when using the new cc4 facial profiles you'll also find additional partial expression folders which allow you to activate particular expressions both as starting points to make other expressions as well as for general testing and reference purposes so the parts folder itself presents a general breakdown of the avatar's individual expressions whilst an additional folder including expressions representing the well-known facts or facial action coding system are also included for reference so the expression library is designed to provide a fast and comprehensive way to apply full as well as partial facial expressions to the avatar but don't forget that nothing is cast in stone and you can always adjust expressions further using the muscle panel or the modify sliders if you wish and the modify panel provides access to all of the individual sliders which drive the avatar's facial expressions just enter a particular section and you can always make precision adjustments here whilst the currently used section will report which if any expressions are currently active on the model now currently used can be particularly helpful to see which expressions are in play within a particular facial animation sequence here in cc4 and to assist with editing animation over in iclone which we'll get onto shortly meanwhile just to show this in character creator if i load an animation scrub through to a particularly expressive frame and then check the modify panel currently used is reporting all of the individual expression sliders which are being used at this frame of the animation and of course you can modify as well as create expressions from scratch directly by sliders using the modify panel but i'd recommend using the muscle panel for more intuitive adjustment and for speed to apply expressions quickly use the expression library this completes the section on using the updated edit facial tools in character creator 4. next we'll switch to iclone 8 to look at how face key can be used for animation on the timeline now i have the same character loaded here in iclone with a simple idle animation applied and opening up face key from the modify panel the first thing to note is that iclone's face key tool set is the same as character craters edit facial so you already know how to use the different tools it's just a matter of understanding how they apply to working on animations here in icloud on a simple idle animation like this which has hardly any facial animation going on it's really straightforward to add face keys by just scrubbing through the clip and making adjustments wherever you wish now you should already have an idea of what you can do with the muscle panel approach from earlier in this tutorial and it's really straightforward and intuitive to use but the important thing is for you to explore it yourself so that you can create the expressions you want to create on your own animations now muscle panel is great for adjusting existing expressions and building them up from scratch but to quickly block in full face expressions it couldn't be faster or easier than by using the expression library also by simply scrubbing along the timeline and adding in new expressions and you'll notice that as i add expressions i regularly scrub forwards and backwards through the clip just to see how things are working and you can switch between using the expression library and the muscle panel and the modify sliders if you wish since they're all accessing the same expression set which is loaded into the avatar as its current facial profile and whilst this tutorial is only covering edit facial and hair face key you can of course use face key to work with face puppet as well as motion capture generated clips so using face key to modify an existing clip like this where there's little or no facial animation is really easy but what about using face key to work on clips where there's a lot going on already here i've cut down the existing idle and facial clip and i'm bringing in another clip which already has a lot of animation first i smooth the transitions between the clips so that the animation is continuous and next i scrub through the newly added clip to find an expression which i want to adjust and using the muscle panel i can make changes to the existing expression now this approach is ideal for making small adjustments for polishing and cleaning up existing animations but you do need to be careful since at this stage using face key is not actually changing the original animation keyframes it's adding a keyframe on top of the original clip this is an important point to note in order to avoid distortions and unwanted results let's see what happens when i add a full face expression from the expression library onto a point in the clip with an existing strong facial expression you can see that a new keyframe is added on the timeline expression layer and the model's face distorts because this expression is adding to the expression which is already on the clip and the stronger the additional expression the greater the distortion so if you want to completely replace an expression on an existing clip using face key and avoid this kind of addition which causes distortion it's important to understand what's happening and to edit the original expression clip directly this means sampling the clip to reveal its keyframes then deleting the keys across the desired time period and only then inserting the new face key keyframe now this is a specific approach for replacing expressions on existing facial animation clips and it can be used to replace any expression or to zero all expressions in an area within an existing clip being able to modify existing clips whether that's to sample them and remove replace or adjust particular expressions directly on the clips keyframes or to work on top of flattened clips and adjust the existing expressions by addition means you can at a keyframe level do virtually everything you need with the character's face in animation and in fact iclone's face key tool set can be used on its own to create fully fledged facial animation even to the point of creating lip sync but given that icloud also has face puppet aculips as well as motion live for mocap it can be much faster and more efficient to use face key where needed especially for modifying and polishing existing clips or for previews and generally blocking out facial animation this tutorial has covered the use of edit facial and face key for character creator 4 and iclone 8 respectively thanks for watching

Channel: Reallusion

Views: 30,912

Keywords: 3D character creator, create your own character, game character, rigged 3D character, Talking Game Character, video game development, character maker, custom character, animation software, 3D software, 3D character creation, character animation, facial animation, morph animation, physics simulation, motion curve editor, motion capture, real-time animation, rigged 3d models, digital human, face maker, realistic avatar creator, 3d face, character builder, avatar maker

Id: M6JnEc4AT3U

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022