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Facial Rigs Bone based or blendshapes?

Discussion in 'Animation' started by MamoruK, Jun 24, 2014.

  1. MamoruK

    MamoruK

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2014
    Posts:
    4
    So I'm about to start a facial rig for our main game character and was wondering what would be better for use in unity. We are using unity 4.3 and I've seen documentation that said it supports blend shapes now, but I would like some feedback from those in the community who have worked with such.
     
  2. TMPxyz

    TMPxyz

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2012
    Posts:
    766
    If you in the end choose to use facial rig, maybe you would be interested to have a try making animations in UnityEditor, could save you much time on import/export work : )

     
  3. jRocket

    jRocket

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2012
    Posts:
    699
    Bones have the advantage of using less memory, but you may not always get the facial poses that you want. You can actually use both- mainly use skeletons but use a few corrective blendshapes to fix it up.
     
  4. RichardKain

    RichardKain

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2012
    Posts:
    1,261
    I personally use blend shapes. But that's me.

    Bones can allow for a bit more structure and a generally faster set-up. But they can also require a lot more of them in order to make more subtle expressions. And while bones are exceptionally good at certain parts of the face (such as the jaw) they fall a little short for some other motions. (complicated lip movements)

    Blend shapes are useful, but creating them and setting them up can be a little bit more difficult. You also need to put a bit more thought and planning into their initial creation. One nice thing about blend shapes is that they work well with scripting, and a capable programmer can use them to put together some impressive facial animations using code.

    Also, if you need your characters to talk, here's a shameless plug...
    Cheshire Lip-Sync
     
  5. TMPxyz

    TMPxyz

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2012
    Posts:
    766
    wow, Interesting asset.
    I just downloaded it and will have a try some time.

    and, maybe it's just me, I think it would be better if you use another model in the cover picture. :)
     
  6. RichardKain

    RichardKain

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2012
    Posts:
    1,261
    Yeah, he's kind of scary-looking. I'm a programmer first, and a 3D modeler second. But I needed an asset that I could distribute, so I made this one myself. Blockhead may not be pretty, but he's mine. Also, his primary purpose is to highlight the mouth motions, and that focus dictated a lot of his design.

    It also serves as an example of what can be done in Unity using blend shapes for facial animation. I threw that model together in Blender. It may be a bit rough visually, but it works.
     
  7. cutjules

    cutjules

    Joined:
    Jan 18, 2016
    Posts:
    1
    Hello. My character have facial expressions driven by bones and the eyes blink driven by 2 shapes. When I import my FBX file in Unity, only the bones animation remains, the 2 shapes are ignored (I can't even see the shapes in the inspector). Previously I worked with a character only driven by facial shapes (no jaw bone), and it was working fine.
    @jRocket : I'm wondering how to set my character/Unity in order to have Unity able to manage 2 deformers (bones + shapes) on the same mesh ?
     
  8. GrayHulk

    GrayHulk

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2013
    Posts:
    3
    I'm wondering if you found a solution to this. In Unreal, my corrective blendshapes (shapes driven by joint rotations) animate just fine, but in Unity the blendshapes come in fine but the blendshape animations don't seem to come over. Maybe I'm exporting from Maya incorrectly. I've even baked the blendshape channels in Maya to see if that took but it didn't.
     
  9. ThmYgx

    ThmYgx

    Joined:
    Mar 31, 2015
    Posts:
    7
    Hi Cutjules and GrayHulk,

    For a simpler and more effective solution to your problems, take a look at this thread at Unity forum.

    You can build a 3D-face-model from a photo and the 3D-face-model will resemble whatever person on the photo.

    More importantly, the created 3D model will have built-in 3D animation. Both the 3D-model and its animation will be professional-quality.

    The savings of time and cost are huge.