Creating the Face Rig

There are a lot of ways to create the facial rig. Controllers let you manipulate expressions right from the 3D View, so you won’t have to adjust the shape keys one by one in the Shapes panel.

Depending on how you want to control your character’s expressions, you’ll need different types of controls. In this case, let’s make a few bones in front of the face and each one of them will control a few shape keys. As an example, take the controller for the mouth: you will set it up so that when it’s scaled up, the mouth opens. The controllers for the eyebrows will control how the eyebrows lift when you change their position.

You have to setup the rig in an intuitive manner (later you’ll add custom shapes that will make them even more intuitive) such that it should be obvious which bone controls do what. Imagine that if you move a bone up, what it controls should move up also because, if it had a different effect that would be counterintuitive. In Figure 11.14, you can see the bones that have been created to control Jim’s basic expressions; a more complex model with more shape keys (to make him talk, for example) would need more controls.

Figure 11.14 These bones will responsible for controlling Jim’s facial expressions.

Parent those bones that control the shape keys to the head bone and make sure they’re in the Control bone group. Also, you can put them into a new layer, so they are separate from the rest of the bones, allowing you to hide the facial controllers while you’re working on the body. You can also name them accordingly with a different prefix such as CF_cheek.L (Control Facial).