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Deformations

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Making facial deformations using weight maps

Video Date March 8, 2006
Area Covered

In repsonse to a question I received today, here's an old video that I found which explains how to use MODO's tool pipe to paint soft selections.

Greg shows how to add a Weight Map to a face, and then paints areas such as the nose and eyebrows so they can be deformed.

Author Greg Leuenberg - Sabpro
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Importing animation MDDs from Maya to modo

David Stripinis, a 3D expert and avid modo user, has worked with James Cameron on Avatar and more recently Double Negative. In 2006 David wrote a script called modomotionApply.py that allowed users to import animations from Maya into modo as a mesh with MDD file. This was a freely available plug-in and unfortunately, after complaints from the community about it not being fully supported. Read more
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Creating Custom Sliders for Morph maps

Description Once you've created a variety of morphs for your character's facial expressions, creating "sliders" by using the channel haul tool and custom user-channels, will enable you to quickly animate your character's face, by simply transitioning between their various poses.

When I first looked at writing a Step-by-Step for this, I was basing it on Ryan Drue's video back from the 401 days on Lux TV. Naturally, I was expecting this to have changed slightly (as I am writing this during 601 SP5). But halfway through I got stuck because the interface had since changed. So I had to go to the forums for help.

Within an hour or so, I received two responses - one from modo mio, who gave me the answer I wanted, and then Clef took it one step further and gave me the answer I needed by creating an updated video using the newer schematic view. So this article is kind of a hybrid of all three approaches but hopefully the simplest way.

Step-by-Step

Note that this article does not cover the actual creation of your morph maps. It assumes you have already created them or else, you're using a mesh such as the Old Man Head (part of modo's standard Content), which comes with its own set of facial morph maps.

    Create Morph Influence
    • Under > Lists > Morph Maps select the first Morph map, right-click, and choose Add Morph Influence.
    • Right-click and rename the Morph Influence by appending the facial expression description (e.g. Morph Influence - Angry).
    • Rinse, repeat for each of your morph maps.
    Rename Morph Influence
                 
      Create Locator & set how it's displayed
      • Create a Locator in the Item List and rename it 'Face Controls'
      • Drag all of your Morph Influences onto the Locator (just to keep things tidy).
      • Position the Locator in front of the head and a bit to the side (as shown in the top image).
      • With the Face Controls locator still selected, under > Display > 3D Items tab on the right, click on Add Draw Options and fill in fields as shown.
        • Under the Locator Shapes tab below that, fill in fields as per image
        Create User Channels
        • With the Face Controller selected in the Item List, go to > Properties > User Channels > Add User Channel for each of the morphs.
        Link User Channels
        • Go to the Setup tab. The Schematics viewport will be displayed.
        • Go to the Channels tab on the bottom right
        • Scroll down and select all of the morphs channels just created
        • Drag them left into the Schematic viewport
        • From the Items tab, select each of the Morph Influences one-at-a-time and then go to the Channels tab and drag the Strength into the Schematics viewport
        • Wire up each morph influence to its own Strength driver
        Schematics              
        Connect Face Controller to Channel Haul
        • Select the Face Controller from the Item List
        • Go to > Assembly > Settings > Utility > Commandand select  item.channelHaul
        • Click on the Face Controller in the viewport and the Channel Haul will appear.
        • Use the sliders to adjust the character's facial expressions.
        • These can be keyed in the Animation timeline.
      Assembly
      Source

      You can watch the original video by Ryan Drue created for modo 401 (Old Luxology Forums - no longer exists) Later on when 601 came out, there were questions on the forum about how the workflow had since changed where Clef and a modo mio responded

      And this is Clef's video using the schematic view

      Credits  Ryan Drue, a modo mio, Clef
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      Related Images:

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      Creating directional constraints for eyes

      Description

      When rendering out characters, most times it's preferable to have them looking straight at the camera. But you may need to move the camera around quite a bit so that you can get just the right angle, which means, you will need to keep manually adjusting the eyes so that they continue to look towards the camera. There is a way though that you can constrain the eyes to remain fixed on a particular spot (locator). That way you can then move the locator anywhere around and the eyes will follow, making it a lot easier for you to set up your shot.

      If however, you move the locator really close to the eyes, they will go cross-eyed, so using a central controller can help deform the eyes in a non-destructive manner.

      Step-by-Step

        Prepare eyes

        • Turn on deformations by pressing O.
        • Select Enable Deformers so they are visible to the camera
        • Put each eye into separate Item mesh layers
        • Select each eye Item individually and center pivot points inside each eye > Edit > Center to Bounding Box > Center

        Setup Tab

        • Select the Setup tab up the top and then press the Setup button (the viewport will be highlighted) - this effectively turns off deformations temporarily. Leave it on until the end.
        • Select one eye at a time, under the Commands menu > Deformers > Transform  . This will add a transformer inside the eye item. It will also create a Transform Effector, which essentially is a locator that the eye will become constrained to.
        • Rename the Transform Effectors Left & Right. As they will both be created in world space sitting at 0,0 they'll be difficult to tell apart.
        • Making sure that the eyes are visible (i.e. hide any distracting layers), from the Item List
        • Select one Transform Effector at a time, and while Match Position is selected, click on Drop Action and then drag'n'drop into each eye.
        • You can reduce the size of these Effector locators under  > Display > 3D Items > Size 
        • Select both locators and duplicate them, and then move them to out in front of the face.
        • Duplicate one of those locators and move it hoizontally so that it's in between the two.
        • Parent the locators to the central one which is now effectively the main controller
        • Now we need to create a directional constraint by selecting the left eye transform locator, and then shift-clicking on the left locator out the front.
        • Under the Modifiers tab, select Direction. Repeat with the right eye.
        • To test that it works, turn off Setup mode.
      Source  You can watch a video that details the process here
      Author  Daniel Ripley - cgdreams.co.uk
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      Bends and Magnet Deformers

      In this YouTube video, Dominiek demonstrates animating a ball travelling through a pipe, and in a cartoon-like way, where the pipe bulges, like a snake swallowing a mouse. However cool it looked, I just could not get it working by following his instructions. But I was determined to try and figure it out. So, with the help of Dan Ablan's modo 601 Signature Course, I think I found a much simpler way of achieving what Dominiek's done - without resorting to using curves. Read more
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