9:22 - My thoughts exactly: you get double transformation. But you solved it. And yes, that´s something I am interested in learning. Great inspiring videos. Just the other day in this week someone told me GP wasn't ready for animation.. Now I can reference your video.
@@LevelPixelLevel nice cause I wanna get better at animation and rigging and I learned so much from this, I instantly subbed and started going through your videos to learn more
AAAARGGG!!!! This looks amazing! I will download it tonight and play with it and report back! I noticed Lattices looked gorgeous but I was at a loss as to how to USE them! I only 90% understand the separate armatures driving the lattices, but I ZERO-percent understand casts, but that dead-straight line on the eye-shapes is astounding/vital! The mouth looks incredible and almost overkill (in a cool way). In traditional 2D we only need like 7ish mouth-shapes, labeled "ABCD(D+)EFGHJ" and any special shapes or in-betweens are drawn by hand since they happen so infrequently. With a rig this advanced would you put each mouth shape in a pose-library? Hmm.... I'll have to play with it!
@@LevelPixelLevel oh yeah I've used the pose library a bit, I think I just saw some custom properties you made that popped on the teeth, and I lost track of how that was achieved (I usually need to watch your vids like three times) but I have been playing with it for a bit now! Every time I think such a simple design doesn't need a rig this in-depth I make a new exciting facial expression that I instinctively want to bank away! ha! The one odd thing I keep trying to do though, is I keep rotating the bones to try and reshape the stroke? When rotating the bone doesn't do anything my brain gets confused. This rig is so in-depth you could use it as a face template and fully "DESIGN" a character (eye shape, mouth size) , then set that as a "neutral" pose and build expressions and mouth shapes on top of that! Which is insane. The Cast thing, though, I can't explain it but it the most satisfying experience! I want to know more about that. and rigging lattices! It's all incredible!
@@infinitehush Thanks! The custom properties are made with drivers, I use the same techniques I've talked about in my drivers tutorials. I see what you mean about rotation, this is something I can actually add in. But I tend to keep all the movements based on location. This helps keep the graph editor clean as well. Yeah, I tend to like keeping the character in a neutral pose. Casts are crazy! They are the coolest tool, but they take forever to get working. I always think I have them figured out and then I resort to trial and error until I get something I like.
@@LOOPPEY Probably about 14 hours. But that includes everything, making the GP shapes, adding and testing all of the rigging elements and conducting the final animation test.
Hey check out this playlist - this goes over how I build the eyebrows and the eyes: ru-vid.com/group/PLbjn7kaP877vcaYQQxY2FrPHAdvt7F2pb I'll be doing a series in the future reviewing how I build the mouths as well, stay tuned!
Okay hats off for the quality of this rig! I'm flattered. And now a thought. I KNOW in a production, when the "can the character do this?" question arises, your character will always have that confident "yes" as an answer. But I'm a bit thrown off by the complexity of all the secondary controls, since I feel that they're overkill. I was really craving a more simple setup. Please take this as constructive words, and by no means criticism, since you're doing everything right and on a high level. I'm just at a point in life where I'm cleansing my tools to the bare minimum. Your 2D rig now has the complexity of a simple 3D rig. And i'm trying to get "back" into 2D for the sake of simplicity. :) So to shut my beak: again, bravo! Great work!
Thank you! And totally agreed. At the moment this character is complex, and for a 2D animator this would take a while to get used to. I'm hoping for something like this I can use the pose manager in Blender to start storing the face shapes, almost like a face chart/pose chart for future artists. That way the animator might never need to adjust the controls, the secondary controls will be a back up in case they need a custom shape. Now that I know these rigs can hit the shapes (step one) I can start to simplify the rig and make it easier to use (step two). Stay tuned for future rigs as I'd like you to test them to see if we can make these easier to use :)
@@LevelPixelLevel Will do! I'm very invested myself in finding that sweet spot, I hope to share my findings on YT as well, I think I'll be putting out (finally!) some content this week, and I'd love to converse with artists like you on this subject matter, cause I sense a huge turning point in the creation process / for the better / is happening this minute! I have been drawing my whole life and got into animation for the love of it, but I also felt that need to learn the ins and outs of all the tehcnology that lets us bring high quality performances to the screen. And then a sense of "are we doing this right" struck me. I have yet to find out! So much tech wizardry is happening keeping up is a chore, let alone investigating and experimenting. Thank you for this discussion and your generosity by sharing what you know.
I have an idea. Build a 3d character with simple shapes and a simple materials on, having a shading material like yours (I firmly believe that in your case the hair is shadeless, the face recieves shades. If so tweak the shadow casted by the hair on the face by working on the colour of the shadow in the light object panel after selecting it). Next draw the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth as you did and add a shrinkwrap modifier to all these (I dunno if it is possible, but I do believe since GP objects are 3d objects, it should be), and add your rig (try doing so before or after you add the shrinkwrap modifier to the GP obj). From a concept standpoint, I think it should work. I am not as OP as U R in Blender so I just wasn't seeing myself make this come true anytime soon, however I do believe it should help with your 3d face rotation idea. Also, I think the face will have to get a subdiv surf and smooth shading so no artifact shows up when shrinkwrapping the GP obj on it and the whole thing can get a simple outline (not necessarily freestyle, but do as you see fit) on it. Give it a try.
Hi! I actually did test this out and I did try this. While a grease pencil object itself cannot get a shrink wrap material, a lattice can. For testing this I added the GP object to a lattice and then shrink wrapped this to a curve 3D object (I was testing a Lego head for this example) overall things worked out well, but I had a ton of issues with the way GP objects draw a fill. No matter how I add the lattice of the shrink wrap the fill always drew across on a flat plane for the GP objects. I might do a video on this in the future sort of showing how I failed to build this style of rig. For something like this I might use a mesh, curve or even a texture based approach.
These videos are absolutely fantastic. Thanks for uploading them. I wonder if you have any plans to do the turnarounds with different angled faces (rear, 3/4, front, etc)? It's amazing that you've figured out how to get such dynamic rigs with cast deformers, considering that's probably not what they were designed for! Incredible stuff. I wonder if the rig is quite memory intensive or does it run quite smoothly? I often rig similar stuff in After Effects with plug-ins and lengthly set-ups, but find that I need to make a proxy/simplified version of the rig to animate with.
Yeah, I want to start looking into a full turn around. I have some ideas for this using the time remapping modifier. Maisam Hosaini did a great job with this rig: cloud.blender.org/p/gallery/5d9c6fbd2ed9a72b3fae65b0 For memory, everything was actually fast. I think that is where Blender has the upper hand. Everything is built for intensive 3D work, so 2D graphics run great!
An enormously useful tutorial. Thanks. But after watching it, I realized that it is better to stick with 3d rigging and animation in Blender, because 2D is almost as complicated but with limited visual impact.
I have the same issue with Moho. This technique is great for simple graphic animation though. It also has potential for swapping between drawn and rigged animation on the fly.
This is really good! So interested in where you'll be taking this. You bounce around menus a lot, is it confusing to remember where everything is located? Keep up the great work!
Awesome tut and we need that lattice tutorial, please :) just getting into rigging and it's blowing my mind cheers! and maybe a tutorial that has physics that effects the rig so it take some of the load when it comes to animation. cheers
This is incredible work. It seems like you are pushing the tools to and sometimes past their limits. Do you have feature ideas or a vision for what 2D rigging could look like in Blender? In the (distant) future I could see someone making an addon which takes a video and maps an actor's expression onto a 2D character live. Perhaps the mouth animation could be generated from the video and audio of an actor.
I like your workflow and the way you rig in 2D🔥 I have a sloth character with basic bendy and controller bones mouth rig. When I turn my head, I want my mouth shape a bit fake perspective to deform when my head turns to the sides, up and down. For that deforming, I try to use lattice on the mouth and the lattice parent to the mouth root bone. But when I move the root bone to the left or right my mouth doubles the transform and goes out of the rig and the lattice. I can't find any solution to combine the lattice and the rig.
@@LevelPixelLevel I'm attempting to duplicate the masking effects used on your mouth rig in 2.81. Unlike in your example, the opacity level has no masking toggle. Do you know where the control has gone?
@@stevecypert Hey, so here is the masking button in 2.80, and yes this was duplicated beside the opacity dial: www.levelpixellevel.com/uploads/1/1/7/8/117873610/screen-shot-2019-12-07-at-12-34-41-pm_orig.png Here is the same masking button in 2.81: www.levelpixellevel.com/uploads/1/1/7/8/117873610/screen-shot-2019-12-07-at-12-34-23-pm_orig.png I've only used the button highlighted here, I actually didn't know this button was also beside the opacity dial. As far as I can tell, in 2.80 this button did the exact same thing as the button in the layer panel, so I imagine they removed it as it was probably redundant.
I must not be using it correctly. Nothing happens when I click on it. I've tried layering strokes and I've tried creating separate GP objects. Would you mind clarifying the steps?
@@stevecypert Hey check out this file: www.levelpixellevel.com/gp_mask_example.html Let me know if you can see the mask in Blender 2.81, this should work. Also, the mask option will have no effect if you are in edit mode. I will be working on a mouth tutorial in the future, but let me know if this helps.
Your works are amazing 🙏 I planning to make a character with a grease pencil like yours and lattice for animation and want to fake head-turning. And when turning the head I want to mask out my eyes from the head. But there is a limitation to using only one lattice per grease pencil objects. So I have to use two different lattices on two different grease pencil objects (the head and the eyes.) But how can I mask two different grease pencil objects in a relation?
Thanks so much for the file. I learned a lot from him. But I ended up with some doubts. I was able to reproduce the lattice casts, the bones that control the Grease Pencil vertices, but couldn't understand how to make a bone load the entire eye (with everything, lattice, bones etc). Did you create a new armature for this? If so, how did you parent it? And if not, how could you set up a separate armature in layers? Sorry for the noob (actually I am hehe) questions, but I spent the whole weekend trying to figure these things out. And even with these questions, I learned a lot from your file. Thank you for sharing!
Hi! Wow thanks for getting in to the file. For the lattice on the eyes there is a second armature on the rig handling most of the deformation, and I attach the lattice to the GP object using a vertex group, that way the lattice does not change the pupil. As the lattice is attached to a second rig I bone parent both of these to the main rig. Lattices will only change the object they are driving if they are moved in edit mode. If you move the lattice in object mode it will not change things that are connected to it. I exploit this feature a lot when I build rig.s Soon I'll be making some lattice tutorials videos (with a very simple set up) and I will explore some of these features.
Thank you for the tutorial! Unfortunately, this is way to complex of a rigging process for a simplistic, kinda low effort style of animation, though I could see great use in this if it's made as a model for future use in a series. That being said, I'm not one for these continuous use simple shape cost-efficiency driven animation styles, and I can't imagine something like Castelvania or even typical anime making much use of such a highly technical rig for far more complex sakuga animation. Still searching for a good drill down video into blender's capabilities into those kinds of styles.
Agreed, I'm going to keep simplifying the process to is can be more useable, or try to make it far easier for an animator to use. In my future attempts I'm going to try to mimic a toon boom harmony set up, which has a similar level of complexity, but is very easy for animators to use.
You can mask with Mesh, although you might have to do some things in the composition nodes as a post process. To Hide things I use drivers on dials, I've create a whole series on this: studio.ru-vid.com57VGk_7I69M/edit
Well, You managed to completely ruin Moho for me there. I'm in the early stages of learning Blender but you have convinced me that it is the way forward
I'm working on a couple right now, but here is one from my older video going over my basic technique. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xU3SEcU_mag.html I use the things outlined here in most of my rigs.
For sure! Start with this video for how to rig eyebrows: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xU3SEcU_mag.html Then move onto these videos for the eyes: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W16SHbI_QzQ.html Each of these series contains three videos, I'll be working on a full mouth tutorial in the future!
Here is a series I made that goes over my process for rigging an eyebrow: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xU3SEcU_mag.html And here is an eye rig series: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W16SHbI_QzQ.html I'll be making a mouth tutorial when I have more time!
Thank you! I have an IMac from 2012, it has been my main computer for a long time. i5, GTX 675MX, 32Gb of Ram. It has been great for working in Blender!
Honestly for this I am not sure how I would do it. This is what I will test out next. Here is the best I've seen: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GX-3F0BG3t4.html
@@LevelPixelLevel My computer is very old. Therefore, I asked at the expense of Blender 3D. At least work with the grease pencil. I have core i5 processor 650, 3.2 frequency. Video card GeForce GTX 760, 2GB. RAM 8 GB. At least work with a drawing tool and 2d animation.
I would love to see Grease pencil for animationg 2d textures in this way but in realtime for 3d characters. Something like they made with softimage in lego movie: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aq_tqsasgoI.html that workflow but with blender's grease pencil (for 2d texture animation rendering for 3d characters/shaders in realtime)
I have actually been testing this: ru-vid.com/show-UCpxizXEIm73-GJJwayhGceAcommunity Although for grease pencil I ran into some issues with the way it curves around a mesh. I might make a video talking about this, sort of going over how I failed to make the lego face example with grease pencil. Mesh might be a better option for this or some sort of curve projector system.
