So I just installed the face rig on a character. Toward the end of setting up all the poses, I noticed that when I did a paste mirrored of the left side keyframes it would take FOREVER to paste them on the right side. I finally got it installed, but now when I try to manipulate the left controls on the face it is very slow to respond or it locks up AM alltogether.

Any ideas what I did wrong?

The other thing is that when I installed the Face rig on the 2001 rig all my main bones dissapeared. In any of my actions or Poses they are turned off. Is there an easy way to fix this?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

The only times I've seen a tremendous slowdown is when someone has paste/mirrored and keyed everything in the model...check to see if every bone/pose is listed in each of the Poses you made for that.

When you run the InstallRig plugin, it hides every bone that doesn't have "geom" in the name. The 2001 rig doesn't hide very much in poses (if I'm remembering correctly)...you should be able to just unhide the bones in the PWS to get everything back.

Hope that helps, Colin.

I experienced the copy/paste keyframe 'slowness' as well.

Niels


ps.
I used 'v13_large_FACE_Squetch_rig_02_18_2007_installations_MirrorBones'

Did you check to make sure that the entire model isn't keyed in the poses you added to FACE, Niels? Every person that has had this problem that I have checked their model has had the entire model keyed in just about every pose that they had copy/paste mirrored. Deleting all of the unnecessary poses fixed the problem in all of the instances up to now. If you aren't able to find the problem, I can take a look at it.

Thanks David,

I'll check that out. I was starting to suspect it might be something like that. The problem seemed to grow as I proceeded, almost exponentially ;-)

I'll check it out. I'm assuming I can just delete those extra keys if they aren't needed.

Thanks for the quick answer.

C

Yep... thats what it was. every time I did a paste mirrored it was pasting all the poses in as well. Just deleted those in the appropriate places and it works great now.

It really makes you appreciate how hard it is to rig and pose a cartoony face vs a realistic one.

I apologise to anyone who had to rig the witch. She must have been a real pain in the butt to rig for facial expression.

Question. On the mouth Shift poses. What would you do to avoid having the teeth go through the gums on the side shifts? Distort the teeth? Thats the only thing that needs cleanup, besides figuring out how to tweek eyeroll on a flattened eye. Right now I've got the eyes stationary since they are black anyway (the alien in my avatar) but I miss the little eye roll bone at the top of the face rig for hinting at the direction of view.

Thanks again.

Thanks.

On the mouth shifts, you might rotate the mouth group a little to squeeze out abit more movement. That will curve it round the teeth.

The one reason I haven't started 'playing' around with FACE installs and other rigging is based on the fact that I can follow instructions easy enough but have no idea how to fix things or where to look if things go bad. Case in point is David's 'did you check the entire model wasn't keyed.......'

For those of us who do not play with AM at this level, how do we check?

Cheers

When you look in the Pose folder for the Pose you're checking in the "Relationships/User Properties" in the PWS, there are going to be sub-folders named "Bones", "Splines" and "User Properties" (each folder will only be there if something was done that would go in that folder). The "Bones" folder will have the bones and constraints that you applied in the Pose, the "Splines" folder will have any CP movements you did in the Pose and the "User Properties" folder will have the other Poses that you adjusted. When making a purely muscle pose, you should only have the "Key Muscle" button selected...if there is anything in the "Bones" or "User Properties" folders when only paste/mirroring CP's you can delete those entire folders for that Pose.

If you run into any problems, David, you can post, e-mail or PM me and I'll respond as quickly as I can. Hope that helps.

Thanks David - Makes sense. So anything in those folders that you didn't move should be deleted. In the spline folder, is there any way of reconciling a spline to the actual model?

Cheers

I'm not sure about this.

If you're in a pose and you want to make muscle changes and then mirror them to another pose, then you have to be in muscle mode. In which case, the filters for skeletal changes are ghosted out.

Basically, if you paste mirror in muscle mode (in a pose), then it's not possible to mirror the skeletal changes. At least I can't. Or maybe I'm picking it up wrong.

In my case it was simple. Copying keys and pasting mirrored was pasting all of the Pose sets into each right side pose I edited (I tweeked the left and then past mirrored the right).

I just went back and looked at all the poses. Most of the left had just splines folders. Some of the unified poses had pose folders with two poses tweeked) those are expected. But the ones with the right single side poses all had Pose folders for EVERY POSE.. and I'm guessing all that chatter back and forth when trying to resolve what the heck each pose was doing was what brought AM to the ground. I just deleted each folder and boom its as smooth as silk.

I had to make more than a few leaps of faith as I found my way through the process of rigging a face, but once I got done it was worth it. I'm sure I did one or two things wrong, but it still seems to work fine. I'll have to go back and figure out how I want to add moving eyes, just in case, I was thinking this Alien looks like he'd translate to a Golum like creature pretty easily, so I'll want those rotating eyes eventually.

The only part that needs tuouch up is the mouth shift because my alien's face is so narrow at the jaw that the teeth easily protrude through the skin.

I'll post some facial extremes at some point.

Yessir, everything you didn't mess with can be safely deleted.

I have reconciled the CP's, but you can get conflicting info. I generally check twice, first I select the CP, right mouse click and then select "Edit CP Weights" (that has the CP number on the left) and then I also select the "Show Manipulator Properties" and select the CP (that should have the number on the pop-up menu at the top. I have had conflicting numbers occasionally between those to ways of checking...when that happens, I check other CP's along the spline to compare and narrow down the possibilities.

Hope that helps, David.