Sven Pohle
ABSTRACT
DreamWorks Animation's Premo animation system enables a direct manipulation of controls in real time on the geometry of the character. To support this workflow a new approach for our facial system needed to be developed as a typical shape driven system with macro controls could not take advantage of the new software.
This paper introduces a free-form facial control shaping system, a new in-house motion system approach coupled with a curve based pose interpolation system in a layered deformation rigging system. The resulting rigs are capable of producing a larger amount of facial shapes while offering more control to the animator. A freely designed set of Featurelines defining either main control areas or layers of minor controls is driven by the posing system. A highly layered Deformation System using a new curve based deformer type at its base is then used to transfer the motion into the Face. Several additional layers allow for a very art directable rigging system and provide a necessary level of abstraction for the artist. This system in its various stages has been used on productions using Premo at DreamWorks.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Supplemental files.
- Gong, M., Nilsson, F., Powell, A., Reisig, J., Wells, A., Bryson, S., Papp, E., and DiLorenzo, P. 2014. Premo: A natural-interaction animation platform. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Talks, ACM, New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '14, 3:1--3:1. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Modesto, L., and Walsh, D. 2014. Dreamworks animation's face system, a historical perspective: From antz and shrek to mr peabody & sherman. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Talks, ACM, New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '14, 37:1--37:1. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {Modesto and Walsh 2014} {Gong et al. 2014}Google Scholar
Recommendations
Dynamic skin deformation and animation controls using maya cloth for facial animation
SIGGRAPH '02: ACM SIGGRAPH 2002 conference abstracts and applicationsThis sketch presents a solution for creating expressive computer facial animation using off-the-shelf software. We will describe how to apply dynamic skin deformation on a CG character using Maya Cloth and how to create artist-friendly animation ...
Artist friendly facial animation retargeting
This paper presents a novel facial animation retargeting system that is carefully designed to support the animator's workflow. Observation and analysis of the animators' often preferred process of key-frame animation with blendshape models informed our ...
Artist friendly facial animation retargeting
SA '11: Proceedings of the 2011 SIGGRAPH Asia ConferenceThis paper presents a novel facial animation retargeting system that is carefully designed to support the animator's workflow. Observation and analysis of the animators' often preferred process of key-frame animation with blendshape models informed our ...
Comments