Building Your Character

 

We strongly recommend to build out your character in stages. Technically, Live streams the below shapes in realtime, but it is common that creating all of these shapes does not always create the best animation. With simpler, stylized characters, creating a character for realtime animation requires the character to be created “to the technology,” often the modelers and riggers sit in front of their webcams to see how shapes interact. We recommend by starting with these “primary” shapes to get the general gross movement from the performance, then add on the “secondary” shapes as needed, but do so sporadically so that you can control and determine what each additional shape does. If possible, it is recommended to use blendshapes to control your rig. Joints or hybrid rigs will certainly work, but blendshapes are typically easier to perform character setup with in all of the available client applications, as well as being more efficient within the Live Client plugin itself due to fewer total controls.

 

Here is the shape list that we recommend starting with:

 

  1. Mouth open
    jaw_open(1)
     
  2. Phoneme - OO
    mouth_phoneme_oh_q(1)
     
  3. Phoneme - mbp
    mouth_phoneme_mbp(1)
     
  4. Eyes - right
    eyes_lookRight(1)
     
  5. Eyes - left
    eyes_lookLeft(1)
     
  6. Eyes - down
    eyes_lookDown(2)
     
  7. Eyes - up
    eyes_lookUp(1)
     
  8. Left eye - blink
    eyes_leftEye_blink(1)
     
  9. Right eye - blink
    eyes_rightEye_blink(1)
     
  10. Left brow - up
    brows_leftBrow_up(1)
     
  11. Left brow - down
    brows_leftBrow_down(1)
     
  12. Right brow - up
    brows_rightBrow_up(1)
     
  13. Right brow - down
    brows_rightBrow_down(1)
     
  14. Mid brows - up
    brows_midBrows_up(1)
     
  15. Mid brows - down
    brows_midBrows_down(1)
     
  16. Left eye - wide open
    eyes_leftEye_wide(1)
     
  17. Right eye - wide open
    eyes_rightEye_wide(1)
     
  18. Smile - left
    mouth_leftMouth_smile(1) 
     
  19. Smile - right
    mouth_rightMouth_smile(1)

Once you've built these core shapes and are happy with how they are working, you can work on perfecting the rest of the expressions, listed below, to get the most out of using Live.

  1. Jaw - left
    jaw_left(1)
     
  2. Jaw - right
    jaw_right(1)
     
  3. Upper Lip Up - left
    mouth_upperLip_left_up(1)
     
  4. Upper Lip Up - right
    mouth_upperLip_right_up(1)
     
  5. Lower Lip Down - left
    mouth_lowerLip_left_down(1)
     
  6. Lower Lip Down - right
  7. Mouth Stretch - left
    mouth_leftMouth_stretch(1)
     
  8. Mouth Stretch - right
    mouth_rightMouth_stretch(1)
     
  9. Mouth Narrow - left
    mouth_leftMouth_narrow(1)
     
  10. Mouth Narrow - right
    mouth_rightMouth_narrow(1)
     
  11. Frown - left
    mouth_leftMouth_frown(1)

     
  12. Frown - right
    mouth_rightMouth_frown(1)
     
  13. Mouth Scrunch - left
    mouth_left
     
  14. Mouth Scrunch - right
    mouth_right
     
  15. Phoneme - CH
    mouth_phoneme_ch(1)
  16. Mouth - up
    mouth_up(1)
     
  17. Mouth - down
    mouth_down(1)

    If you are using head motion with Live, your rig should be able to do the following:

 

  1. Head rotation - left
    head_left(1)
     
  2. Head rotation - right
    head_right(1)
     
  3. Head rotation - up
    head_up(1)
     
  4. Head rotation - down
    head_down(1)
     
  5. Head tilt - left
    head_LeftTilt(1)
     
  6. Head tilt - right
    head_RightTilt(1)
Create your own Knowledge Base