What's his motivation? The face is a huge part of conveying this clearly and convincingly through a performance.

Planning and Prep

WE ARE GOING TO WORK THROUGH some facial animation techniques using a simple example of a typical close-up shot. This keeps the staging simple and makes it easy to focus on just the face, while also being a very common shot style found in film, TV, and games. To make the exercises as straightforward as possible, the body has been blocked in for you, so you only need to worry about the face.

When doing any kind of dialog shot, it's important to thoroughly plan your animation. Don't just dive right in and start keyframing. Listen to the audio by itself, over and over, until all its accents and nuances are thoroughly engrained in your mind. Also think about the context of the line, along with the character's internal thought process and motivation for saying it. It's quite possible to animate a line in completely different ways, yet when played in context with the surrounding shots, only a specific approach will ring true.

In our case, we don't have a context, just a single line to use for practicing some animation technique. For the sake of consistency, we'll pretend that the ideas in this planning section are what a director has instructed us to do. In the real world, this planning and prep would have been done before the body was animated, as it would influence our decisions in that regard as well.

1 In the Sounds folder in this chapter's project directory is a.wav file with a short dialog clip (nothingtosay.wav). Open it in your favorite media player and listen to it on looped playback. Use headphones if possible. Write down the line and listen to its nuances.

2 I hear two distinct accents in the line, on the “noth-” (first syllable) in “nothing,” and on “say.” The pitch goes up to “nothing” and down on “say.” This is also reflected in the body animation. Mark the accents down in your notes.

3 Next I think about the tone of the line and the subtext it may be communicating. The way he says it sounds like he's being uncooperative. It feels like he means “I have nothing to say to you in particular,” to whomever he's speaking to. This is more material for our notes.

4 Reference is always a good idea. Act out the line and create some video reference for yourself. Make notes on the brow poses, eye darts, blinks, etc. You can also make thumbnails, have a friend act it out, whatever you find useful in determining what you will animate.

5 Once you've decided on the acting choices and know why you've made them, it's time to start working on the face. Some animators do the lip sync first, while others do it last. I find it helpful to first do a few full face poses to use as a structure. Open faceAnimation_START.ma. The main head control has animation, but the face is stuck in its default blank stare, which we'll fix soon enough!

faceAnimation_START.ma
faceAnimation_END.ma

To import a sound file into your scene, go to File > Import and select the audio file. Then right click on the timeline and choose the file from the Sound menu.

Core Poses

IT'S VERY FEASIBLE to animate the face in a layered fashion, but I've found I get better results when I first block in some initial expressions to use as a foundation. The accents we indicated in our planning stage create a perfect framework on which to base these poses. This also helps make the work stronger, since we can focus on just a few expressions and not worry about making fluid motion yet. We'll put in four poses total: the accents on “nothing” and “say,” the anticipation pose on “to,” and the starting pose. Things will get moved around a little when we refine them, but you'll likely find that these core poses really help keep you on track.

Cenk is a very powerful and versatile rig. We're going to try to make sure to take a very simple approach to the facial posing so that we don't get inundated with keyframes early on in the process. You will also notice we are referencing the Cenk rig into our scenes now–don't forget the great referencing cheats from last chapter!

1 Open faceAnimation_START.ma. Select Cenk's master control and, in the Channel Box, select Facial GUI Window and select View. Now change the time slider to frame 14 and hit the Key All button on the Facial GUI.

2 Cenk's pupils and irises are a little small–if we scale them up he will be more appealing. Make the Iris size 1, and the pupil size. 5.

3 Start with the brows: raise them and make the shape slightly asymmetrical. Raise the lower lids a bit and make the L eye upper lid slightly higher to complement the higher L brow.

4 For the mouth, bring the corners down and inward. It's roughly the mouth shape for “ha-,” but we don't need to be concerned with it too much right now. Curl the lips out a bit and shape the mouth.

5 At f32, set a key on the face controls. Bring the brows down, lift the lids some, and expand and shape the mouth for “say.”

6 Copy f14's pose to f18 by selecting all face controls and MM dragging in the timeline to f18 and setting a key. This will hold that pose for five frames.

7 Key the face at 24. Raise the brows even more, lift the lids, and shape the mouth for the “to” sound.

8 Key the face at f01 and create the starting pose. We want to convey him being slightly defiant. Lower the brows, but not enough so he looks angry.

9 A slightly open frown helps show that he's displeased about the situation, but not gruff or stewing.

faceAnimation_START.ma
faceAnimation_END.ma

In the timeline's right click menu, go to the Sound options box. There you'll find an offset attribute if you need the sound file to start earlier or later a given number of frames.

Lip Sync 1—Jaw Motion

WITH THE CORE POSES COMPLETED, we're in a good spot to start on the lip sync. As we've seen time and time again, the approach of starting broadly and adding detail in phases will work beautifully here. We won't worry about mouth shapes yet, just the jaw movement. Once that is working, everything else usually falls into place pretty smoothly. It's easy to overlook the variety of timing in the jaw movement. In a given line of dialogue, there is usually a wide range of sharp and smooth movements. One trick that helps make them a bit more tangible is to say the line while holding your hand underneath your jaw. You'll be able to feel the words with sharper timings and then translate that into your curves. I found that the biggest accents were on “I,” “nothing,” and “say.”

Normally rigs come with a “face cam” that is used for animating lip sync. This is especially useful in scenes where the character is moving all over the place, doing twists and turns, etc. Cenk does not come with a face cam, partly due to the fact he is basically one giant face to begin with. If you want to create one, simply create a camera and position it in front of his face. Then select his head_local_con and parent constraint the camera to it.

1 Start with the scene you just animated, or with my Lipsync1_Start.ma.

2 It will help to start fresh with the jaw animation. Select the Jaw control in the facial GUI, and in the Graph Editor, delete all of the keys except the one on frame 1.

3 Do a first pass just to add the open/close movement. Just get the general timing for now. Do an open/close for each open mouth shape, or four total. Keep in mind that you want the open to be a few frames before the actual sound.

4 This is the curve I came up with for the first pass. Notice the accents on “I,” “nothing,” and “say,” while “have” and “to” are much smaller.

5 Tweak the timing and get the little bump that happens on “-thing.” I like to save these secondary bumps for after the main accent so the mouth doesn't get too chattery.

6 Work on the timing of “say,” which he draws out longer in the clip. I added a key to hold it open longer, and a longer ease in at the end.

Lipsync1_Start..ma

Lipsync1_End.ma

Animate the physical movement of what's being said, rather than simply basing it on the words. If you open/close every syllable, the mouth will chatter pop. Analyze yourself saying the line and only put in what you actually see.

Lip Sync 2—Mouth Corners

THE JAW IS JABBERING AWAY, so it's time to work on the mouth corners. With this rig, the corners are accessible using the left_Mouth_Con and the right_Mouth_con in the facial GUI. The four directions are labeled Smile, Frown, Narrow, and Wide. The two directions we're focusing primarily on in this pass are Narrow and Wide. Other rigs might have more controls for the mouth shapes, but the idea at this point is the same: add another level of detail without going overboard. There's plenty of passes left, so we don't need to do everything at once. Because the mouth rig is so simple, we're basically only worrying about if the corners are in or out at a given time. As for up and down, they will stay in a downward frown position for the entire shot. This is the point where we can start thinking about basic mouth shapes and phonemes. If you're new to animating lip sync, there are plenty of charts online and in classic animation books to study extensively. For this exercise, we'll just walk through the ones we need for the dialogue. Remember, we're not doing the full mouth shapes yet, just the positioning of the corners to get us on the right track.

1 Open Lipsync2_Start..ma. At f07, move both corners out for the “I” sound.

2 Move to f13 and bring them in some for the “ah” sound in “have.”

3 Key the mouth corners slightly wide on frame 15 to get a good read of the “N” of “nothing”

4 On frame 8, we need an “o” shape for “nothing.”

5 Copy the key from frame 18 to frame 20, and on frame 24 give him a nice wide shape.

6 At f28 bring the corner back in for the “to” sound.

7 Hold that shape until f34, then at f40 the corners come out again for “say.” Bring out his L corner more to give a nicer shape on this last word, so it has a slight drawl to it.

8 Finally, we want a nice ease in to the ending pose, as the mouth relaxes into his final expression.

Lipsync2_Start..ma

Lipsync2_End.ma

Don't forget to animate to the camera primarily, rather than the face cam if your shot has one. Use the face cam as a helper, but ultimately the shapes need to look their best in the shotCam.

Lip Sync 3—Mouth Shapes

LET'S CONTINUE REFINING our lip sync by fleshing out the mouth shapes. This is one of the more organic parts of the process, where you need to experiment a little and do some back and forth to get things working. The following cheat is a guideline, rather than a step-by-step process.

Remember that less is normally more. With the jaw open/close pass working with the lip corners narrow/wide pass, we are generally about 85 percent of the way done. These two passes need to be really close to perfect in order for the lipsync to read well to an audience. By adding this pass of custom shapes we're getting much closer to the final performance.

1 Open Lipsync3_Start.ma. I've removed the keyframe on the jaw on frame 3, and on frame 7, the corners of the mouth need to be wider to get the “I” shape.

2 On frame 14, create the “F” shape by using the bottom lip roll slider in the facial GUI.

3 On frame 15, we need to see his teeth a bit to get a read on the “N” of “nothing.” I used the lip up/down controls and a bit of sneer.

4 The “O” shape was a little too overdone on frame 18, I toned it down.

5 Let's get another nice read on the teeth on frame 20.

6 Key the lip up/down controls, as well as the jaw and sneer controls on frame 28, then build a nice, toothy, snarly “S” shape on frame 30.

7 I keyed all of the mouth controls on frame 30, then slid all of the keys starting on frame 31 three frames forward. He needs to hold the longer.

8 Finish that hold on the “S” by middle mouse dragging the key on frame 30 to frame 32 on all mouth controls except the jaw.

9 Watching the animation back a few times, it definitely feels like there is too much of a pose change in the corners of the mouth at the very beginning. I think this wider start pose feels better.

Lipsync3_Start..ma

Lipsync3_End.ma

Be sure to give any closed shapes at least two frames. Ms, Bs, Ps, Fs, Vs, etc all need to be held at least that long to not look like mistakes or hitches.

Lip Sync 4—Tongue

THE FINAL STEP to really sell the lip sync is to get the tongue moving on the right sounds, in particular “no-” and “-thing,” the “T” sound on “to,” and the “S” sound on “say.” Unless it's an extreme close-up or something like that, the tongue mainly just needs to be seen when it's touching the top of the mouth, for example on “N” sounds, and when it moves back to the floor of the mouth. Otherwise it generally just needs to stay out of the way.

We can get away with a lot of cheating when keyframing the tongue. Again, since a viewer will normally only see the tongue peripherally when watching the animation, we can build a tongue “flick” and copy it to the correct frames later

1 Open Lipsync4_Start.ma. On frame 37 (because the mouth is open), select the master controller and turn on the inner mouth controls either by typing in “1” or “on” and pressing enter.

2 Select all three tongue controls and make a quick select set by going to Create > Sets > Quick Select Set…. Type in the name “tongue” and choose Add to Shelf. This makes it really simple to select the tongue.

3 On frames 35 and 40, hit to set a key with the tongue in default position. On frame 37, key the tongue in an upward pose like this. The tongue controls can be translated as well as rotated.

4 On the timeline, press +LMB and draw a selection from frame 35 to frame 40. Right click on this range and choose Copy. Now anywhere we need this tongue “flick,” we can paste it.

5 On frame 14 (two frames before we need the tongue in the up position), right click on the timeline and hit Paste > Paste. All three keys are pasted and are still in the clipboard for us to paste again.

6 Paste this animation again at frame 20, and frame 27. Delete the animation on frames 35–40 and paste your clipboard again on frame 32, or, if you feel comfortable, in the Graph Editor, delete the keys on frame 35 and slide the keys on frames 37 and 40 back 3 frames.

Lipsync4_Start..ma

Lipsync4_End.ma

Most of the time you don't need to get crazy detailed with the tongue for lip sync, unless it's an extreme close-up or realistic-style animation. If it's at the top of the mouth when it should be, and we see it travel down when it needs to, that's usually enough to sell it in many situations.

Blinks

BLINKS ARE A VITAL PART of facial animation and acting, and a great way to add more life and interest to your character. Before we continue with the lip sync animation, let's take a look at doing a typical, standard blink. This is a common approach to doing them, but you want to make sure you don't do all your blinks this way. There are many different kinds of blinks – fast, slow, half blinks, fluttering eyes, takes, disbelief, etc. The approach you use will be dictated by the emotion and thought process of the character. Nevertheless, this is a tried and true way to get a nice, organic-looking blink and is a great starting point for building a “blink library” in your animation toolset.

Remember, we've learned some great ways to copy keys to the clipboard and export animation, so you can take a blink that you create in one file and use it throughout your animations, over and over. Just be sure to add some customization and “flavoring” to each blink to match the scene.

1 Open Blinks.ma and switch to a front view. Select the eyelid controls, and at f01 key the upper and lower lid controls where they are.

2 On f02 key the upper lids down slightly to create a slight ease out.

3 At f03 bring the upper lids down so they touch the top of the pupil, and start bringing the lower lids up slightly.

4 On f04 the lids are closed. Normally the upper lids come down about 75% and the lower lids 25%–on the Cenk rig, we control this contact point with the Eye Height control.

5 We'll hold the eyelids closed for two frames, but move the contact point down just a bit. Use the Eye Height control to key this.

6 At f06, the eyes are opening back up. For a standard blink, I like to have the upper lids be around halfway past the irises on the way back up. The lower lids start to go back down as well.

7 At f07 both lids are almost back to the starting pose. Unless the eyes are completely open or closed, I generally like to keep the lids touching the irises on the way up or down, as it makes the blink feel smoother.

8 Instead of ending on f08, do a nice ease in from f07 to frame 10 to cushion into the pose and make it feel more organic.

9 For an extra bit of polish, do another four frames of very subtle ease-in cushioning on the upper lids. This is what the curves look like. Look at Blinks_End.ma for the final result.

Blinks.ma
Blinks_End.ma

Another nice touch for blinks can be adding some very slight up and down in the brows. It depends on the situation, but sometimes adding a barely perceptible amount of motion here can help make things more organic.

Blink and Brows

LET'S REFINE THE BROWS and add a blink to our face animation. We'll have Cenk blink when his head raises, since its speed fits well with the motion we have going. We'll keep it fairly close to a standard blink, except that the closing will be a bit slower since that fits his uncooperative, slightly indignant attitude. Then we'll tighten up the timing of the brows rising, and add an accent in the brows and eyes to bring out the the final word of the shot, “say.”

You may find that you are doing a little bit of back and forth with the timing of lids and brows. Indeed, you need to have a workflow that allows for this process to happen so you can “discover” the best performance. We'll go through adding some blinks to the scene and brow movement, but experiment with some different values and timings in your own shot to get the best result.

1 Open BlinkBrows.ma. Start the blink on f05. Key the upper and lower lids in their current position.

2 Let's make the transition down into the closed pose a total of four frames. Here are f07 and f08. Notice that we always see part of the iris when the eyes are open any amount.

3 On f09 and f10 we have the closed pose.

4 A slower opening fits this blink as well. The eyes start opening at f11, and at f14 the tops and bottoms of the irises are still touching the lids.

5 The eyes continue to ease into their pose at f18.

6 Now let's work on the brows during the blink. We want to have some overlap, with the brows going up leading the eyes opening slightly. Select all the brow controls.

7 Move the start of the brows' motion to f08, right before the eyes are closed at f09. At f14 they should hit their up pose.

BlinkBrows.ma
BlinkBrows_End.ma

When doing any kind of blink, keep the irises partially visible in all of the opening and closing poses. This avoids flashes of only eye whites, which will pop in an unappealing way.

8 A quick trick for doing cushions for the flat curve sections is to move to the frame before they hit the pose, in this case f13.

9 MM drag in the timeline from f13 to f14 and set a key. Now f14 is almost the same value it was, but drifts through to f19. Fix the tangent handles and you instantly have a nice subtle drift to make things more organic, and not frozen for a stretch of frames.

10 To add a bit more fleshiness to the brows, I often like to make the apex lead the rest by a frame. Select the three brow controls shown here.

11 These are the apex of the brow pose, so select their keys at f08 and f14 and slide them one frame earlier to lead the rest of the brows. It's subtle but a nice little touch.

12 Let's move to the end of the animation, on the word ‘say.’ Right now the brows and eyes just stop on that last pose at f32, so let's add a little accent. Select the brow controls.

13 At f36, set a key on the brows so they have the same pose as f32. Then at f32, pull the brows down just a small amount to create a little overshoot.

14 Key the brows at f40 and add a little cushion starting at f36.

15 Select the three middle brow controls and from f32 onward move them one frame earlier so they lead the rest of the brows.

16 Make a very small complementary squint with the eyes that trails the brow by a frame. It will help give the feel that his face is working as an organic unit, rather than an assembly of moving parts. See BlinkBrows_End.ma for the end result.

The brow sections that lead the rest depend on the pose you're hitting at a given time. Use the apex as a guide.

Eye Darts

ANOTHER IMPORTANT ELEMENT of organic facial animation is eye darts. They're often used for “keep alive” moments, where a character isn't really moving much but needs to look like they're still a living being. They show that a character is thinking about something and that they have an internal monologue happening. And just on a practical level, our eyes rarely stay focused on the exact same spot for more than a second or so, and usually less.

Eye darts can definitely go deeper than that, however, and should be thought about with as much attention as any other element in a character's performance. An eye dart at the right moment can communicate things that nothing else could. A character's eyes darting away as they're trying to convince someone of something can convey them thinking, “Are they buying this?” or show worry, realization, doubt, or any other internal emotion. This is something that we as animators need to be constantly thinking about.

We'll go through a simple eye dart workflow, but keep in mind it's a starting place. Your decisions about eye darts ultimately depend on what you need to communicate about the character's internal mental state.

Rather than bouncing them around randomly, it helps to create a subtle pattern with the darts. Shapes like triangles, rectangles, etc. can be good guides for plotting the path the darts make, provided you don't make them too obvious. Varied timing and amounts of movement can help with this. Shapes make sense because we often look back and forth between a person's eyes and mouth when we're conversing. For this exercise, we'll do three darts, and form a triangle shape with their path. They're traced in the example as they're very hard to see in still pictures. Be sure to follow along with the Maya file.

1 Open eyeDarts_Start.ma. If your eye control is not visible, select the master control and change the eyes attribute to “on” or “1”. Then switch to the front panel to key this action. Hit to set a key on f07.

2 Eye darts are generally 2 frames long at 24fps, so on f09 move the eye target slightly to the left in the front panel and hit . It's okay that his eyes are closed – in fact eye darts work just as well hidden within blinks.

3 Now do another dart, this time downwards. Key the eyes where they are on f13, then move the eye target downwards and slightly back towards the middle on f15.

4 Now we'll bring it back to the start position, starting on f25 and ending on f27. You can even middle mouse drag the key from f7 to f27 to be sure.

5 I did one more eye dart from f38 - f40, from right to left. Often our eyes dart between the eyes of the person we're speaking to, so this last dart reinforces the idea Cenk is talking to someone directly.

6 Here's what the curves look like for these darts. Our eyes move VERY quickly, so it's not necessary to spend too much time cleaning this up. Watch eyeDarts_End.ma for the final result.

eyeDarts_Start.ma

eyeDarts_End.ma

Our eyes tend not to track things smoothly, at least not without turning our head. If the head isn't moving, it's common to do a series of sequential darts, rather than a smooth pan across.

Final Touches

WE'RE IN THE HOME STRETCH with this face animation! All that's left is some tweaks and polishing to make it look as good as possible, which we'll go over in this cheat. No matter what kind of facial rig you run into during your career, the principles remain the same. The face is working as an organic whole, yet some parts are influencing others (brows can influence the lids, mouth corners can push up the cheeks, etc.). From ears to nose flares to a dozen lip controllers, modern production rigs are capable of most any expression possible. Remember, the face has to support the body animation.

Most novices get very excited when they first encounter a sophisticated facial rig, like Cenk. The result is normally a very finely tuned face performance on a lackluster body. Do not do this! The great thing about Cenk is that he is a bouncing ball, so there is no reason that your “body” performance shouldn't be really solid before moving on to the face. And when you venture out into the animation world and use different characters, remember the basics you learned with Cenk. Happy animating!

1 Open eyeDarts_End.ma. The first thing to do is give a slight anticipation down before the brows move up. It's another detail that will help things feel less mechanical and more organic. Select the brow controls.

2 I added a key to f03, and on f08 brought the eyebrows all down slightly. Notice how nice and fleshy this makes the face feel.

3 On second look, it looks like the up pose at f14 is still hitting a bit too hard. Select the keys at f13 and f14 and pull them down to make the cushion a little bigger. Now they won't stop so quickly and will look more natural.

4 Another subtle polish thing is to make sure the mouth corners have nice little arcs in them when moving in and out. It's another one of those details that isn't obvious, but just helps everything feel a little nicer.

5 I added more sneer to the “N” of “nothing.” The nose is easy to over-animate, so be careful when doing this.

6 For some final texture, I added the head control to an animation layer and animated a little shake on the word “nothing.” I animated it just a little big, and then used the weight parameter to dial it down until it looks nice and subtle. Watch the final in faceAnimation_Final.ma.

eyeDarts_End.ma.

faceAnimation_Final.ma

Always have a reason for everything you're doing when it comes to acting choices. If you can't justify something by what the character is thinking, you probably don't need it (or you need something else).

Repetitive Stress Injury

by Eric Luhta

REPETITIVE STRESS INJURY, or RSI, is a very real hazard of working on a computer all day, as animation requires us to do. The stress you can put on your hands and wrists doing tiny movements day in and day out can add up to a very painful and debilitating condition that can jeopardize your ability to work. Taking precautions, being conscious of ergonomics, and working smart can keep you happily keyframing for many years.

I've been a victim of RsI, though it was before I became an animator. When I was in music school, I was practicing the piano eight hours a day, and also worked part-time as an IT supervisor for the university's music computer lab. If I was awake, chances are I was playing or typing and using a mouse. everyday I was constantly using my hands without much of a break and it didn't take long before I pushed myself to the breaking point. The pain had been building up gradually in my wrists and forearms, but I shrugged it off until it became too much to ignore. This was before RsI was common knowledge, as it is now, and I went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong. eventually I found one who was experienced with this growing phenomenon of the computer age, and could treat me.

It wasn't an easy road to recovery though. At the worst point, I couldn't turn a doorknob or drive because of the pain. I didn't play music for about four months, and had to deal with the possibility of not playing ever again. I had to get lots of physical therapy, quit my job that helped support me through school, postpone classes, and put everything I loved to do on hold. It was an extremely difficult experience to get through, but ultimately an invaluable one because it taught me how important it was to take care of my body. If you can't imagine a life of not animating or at best being in pain whenever you do, you need to make working smart a priority.

Animation is extremely mouse intensive, and until we come up with a better interface, we need to be cautious about our working style. The standard computer mouse is actually one of the worst ergonomically designed devices in the history of civilization. Hold your forearm with the opposite hand and rotate your palm down as it is when using a mouse. you will feel your forearm bones twist over each other, tightly pulling your tendons and muscles above your wrist together. Tension equals friction, and over time your tendons will become inflamed and possibly develop scar tissue that exacerbates the problem.

So step number one: get a better mouse or mouse alternative. I use a Wacom tablet to animate, and since I started with it years ago (along with doing some of the other practices I'll mention), I've had no issues with RsI. It takes a week or so to get used to it, but once you do, you'll find it puts much less stress on your body. Many artists use tablets nowadays, and every place I've worked at had them available upon request.

If you really like using a mouse, research and find a quality ergonomic one. evoluent (www.evoluent.com) makes a great vertical mouse that's very comfortable to use. It's oriented vertically to avoid the forearm twisting mentioned earlier. I've seen plenty of these in animation studios as well.

Take lots of breaks! every hour or so you should take at least 5–10 minutes away from the computer to rest your eyes and hands. It may be hard during a crunch but in the long run it will make you more productive. Besides, it gives you a legitimate reason to make use of the studio's ping pong or pool tables!

Use good posture when working. If you work at home, the investment in a good chair and desk will pay for itself in keeping you healthy. Research ergonomics and find a combination that works for you.

Exercise and eating right is the last element of staying in the animation game. exercise releases the tension that builds up in your body from sitting and working long hours. Doing some weight training will stretch your tendons and muscles and make them more resilient and flexible. since I've stayed with a weight regimen and followed the above advice, I've been working happily with no issues and no pain my entire career.

RSI is very real and its effects can be devastating to your career. Do your homework, insist on working only in proper conditions, and your body will reward you by always being there for you.