Custom Face Rig for HumanIK Rig

[Anonymous]

I've added a basic face rig to my HumanIK setup -- jaw, eyes, eyelids and brow joints with controllers. The joints are children of the HumanIK Head joint while the corresponding controllers live under the Ctrl_HeadEffector. Controllers are properly zeroed-out and clean and each lives under a group node.

Character is completely skinned to the skeleton and the joints work as I'd expect them to. However, when I constrain the joints to the controllers, strange things begin to happen. I use an Orient constraint for the jaw-jaw controller -- no problem. But for the eyes, eyelids and brow joints, I used Parent constraints to give me translation control as well as rotation. However, this seems to break the joints connection to the skeleton as they no longer move with the skeleton when moving the rig around -- they just stay in place.

I've tried various ways to get around this, but basically I'm unable to constrain my face joints to controllers without losing their connection to the HumanIK skeleton. Has anyone run into this problem before? Is there a way to fix it, or am I condemned to animating the face joints without the use of rig controllers?

[magillaGuerilla]

rule of thumb - don't parent anything to or modify the controller hierarchy in any way. Parent constrain that stuff from a separate hierarchy - and usually better to constrain to joints than controllers.

If you still have problems then do the same with the joints, take them out of the HIK joint hierarchy (parent them at export after you bake, if that's what you're doing).

[Anonymous]

Appreciate the reply. I am trying to export to a game engine, which is why I'm trying to keep the skeleton free of any controllers in the hierarchy. I considered creating a separate skeleton to skin the model to and constrain it to the HumanIK skeleton, but considering all the unpredictable things HumanIK does, I didn't want to waste anytime in case that didn't work out.

I think in the future I'll just use a different rigging solution as HumanIK isn't flexible enough to meet my needs.

[magillaGuerilla]

Understood. Creating a separate skeleton is fine but HIK already does all that for you. If you really need a separate skeleton you can still drive it around with HIK without the need for constraints.

Personally I use TSM3 (The Setup Machine) which also bakes to a game skeleton and allows input for mocap. If you set up a definition for the TSM mocap skeleton you can drive it with HIK and then bake to controls.