Master FACS Rigging for Facial Motion Capture
The Gnomon Workshop has released FACS rigging for facial motion capture, a detailed guide to facial rigging recorded by Ghost VFX Creature Supervisor Madhav Shyam.
The intermediate-level workshop provides over 10 hours of video training in Maya and Marmoset Toolbag.
A detailed guide to creating a FACS-based facial rig in Maya
The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is widely adopted in visual effects and animation as a way to represent facial expressions.
In the workshop, Madhav Shyam explains how to build a simplified FACS-based facial rig in Maya and animate it with motion-capture data captured using the ARKit system on an iPhone.
He begins by explaining the key factors that contribute to believable character performances, then builds a rig system that drives the FACS shapes, focusing on one part of the face at a time.
Shyam then demonstrates how to constrain mocap data for use with the rig, and how to transfer the animation and rig system to different types of 3D character.
As well as the tutorial videos themselves, viewers can download supporting project files including the facial shapes required to build the rig system.
The tutorial uses the free 3D head model available from 3D Scan Store, and the commercial Gorilla Écorché 3D model.
About the artist
Madhav Shyam is Creature Supervisor at Ghost VFX.
He has over seven years of industry experience on movies and broadcast series including Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Troll, Slumberland and Star Trek: Discovery.
Pricing and availability
FACS Rigging for Facial Motion Capture is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.
Subscriptions cost $57/month or $519/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about FACS Rigging for Facial Motion Capture on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
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