Animating Faces with a 2D Texture in Blender

One method I use to animate my characters faces using just a 2D texture and some shader work within blender!
Here's another great method if you have multiple textures:
• 2D Facial Rigs Just go...
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// Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:31 Setup
1:34 Face Unwrapping
2:16 UV Grid Explained
2:45 Exporting Textures
3:08 Texturing in CSP
5:49 Shader Setup
8:40 Control using Drivers
11:20 Separate Eye and Mouth Control
12:22 Outro
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[@theburntcrumpet8371]

When you scroll the UV like that, her face looks like a fruit machine. I like the idea of using this somehow to express that a character is unsure what to feel

[@lacruzo]

That’s a fun idea yeah xD

[@caden.does.musicc]

My wishes have been answered! YEAHHHH!

[@podgehodge5150]

Ikr! This is exactly what I was looking for after the last video

[@music_shev_]

Another god tier easy to follow tutorial with simple yet in-depth explanations? Sign me up, I'm all here for it

[@Xfrimz]

I started last month making my model using your low poly tutorial, went through texturing, rigging and about to finish some weight painting and now this banger drops so I can bring my model to completion with a face 😭

[@vildrox019]

I love the idea of the face rolling to the current expression.

[@sharkyboss3d]

I’ve been looking on and off for something like this, and it pops up in my recommended? YEAAAAAAAA

[@hohoaho6890]

THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR FOR MONTHS NOW THANK YOU

[@strigzzz]

Loved the last tutorial, excited to try this out, thank you for making these

[@Kn.77]

Absolutely incredible tutorial! It's a great continuation from the last one! Thank you so much for making these :D

[@buraym_dev]

nice one, always love your videos ! keep up the good work

[@TOAKSuriFox]

Wooo, amazing! just what I've been looking for

[@ashiq00056]

Thanks Man , I have been waiting for this method tutorial for long time!! you explained it so nicely.

[@HazySkies]

I knew of the mix nodes for multiple textures, but your clear explanation and demonstration of the math nodes has helped me with understand the optimisation of the process. Animating using a single value instead of juggling countless others helps tremendously! This newly acquired technique may serve as a key motivator and still framing method for my future 2D animations. Thanks a bunch! ^-^

[@kyoobot6827]

This incredibly detailed, well explained, and smart I loved this so much Thank you for your hard work

[@sequoia5934]

omggg i was WAITING FOR TGIS

[@yon4166]

its literaly what i was looking for, THANKS YOU ILY

[@sashahenriksen]

im rather new to low poly modeling, only been at it for a few weeks and videos like this are so helpful. also even before you said it my mind went to "oh like animal crossing" because it seemed familiar. Really informative! Subscribed!

[@sillygoose8037]

reallly coool stuff man, thanks for the video, appreciate it.

[@alexblue2653]

I love this tutorial, it made everything so much easier to understand !

[@RohemN]

I'm so glad I found this, I'm dipping my toes with 3D modeling by learning how to make low poly stuff and this is so helpful!

[@mellohd]

This is so perfect, helped me out a LOT because previously i just didn't give any of my models an expression because i didn't know how lol. Now my new model finally can express emotion. Your tutorial was really helpful and easy thank you so much!!

[@mathaeis]

This is fantastic! I can't wait to give this a try. I have a small project in mind that might be able to make use of it!

[@jayplaays3194]

Thank you so much for this!! This is so cool!!

[@sebastiane3994]

Love your work! thank you so much!

[@lestrucsdeflo]

Perfect as always 👌

[@EmmaW-ik9go]

THANKKK YOOOUUUUUUU ive been wanting to learn how to do this and this is amazing timing!!!

[@jacobprentice2649]

I was just thinking about this, thanks!

[@3DandIA]

lacruzo I love your tutorials, very good.

[@disgustedguy]

nice one. very informative and easy to understand as well as easy to replicate. awesome. thx, dude.

[@marshmallowboi]

Loved this! really helpful! really inspired me to create my characters in blender! :)

[@user-by2gt7ft3p]

고마워요 감사합니다 당신의 모델링은 정말 매력적이에요

[@nesferatu]

Great breakdown! I had previously purchased your low poly girl model to recreate it from scratch and subsequently texture it in Substance Painter (a workflow I'm trying to learn). I've been looking for a good tutorial that covers animating 2D faces and look what pops up in my feed. Thank you so much!

[@comet3429]

I’m saving this to use for later , thanks for the explaination

[@hey_bebop]

Great content, thank you very much!! ❤

[@cakeghoul]

I just watched this and your previous video, I've got a project I want to start of a low-poly fashion game inspired by ds and 3ds games, I've never touched blender in my life and even though I was only half listening, everything made sense to me, I cant wait to get started on the project! Subbed!

[@blueroman460]

Thank you so much for the video!

[@cc95g85]

Awesome! Thanks

[@geckoram6286]

Man why did I have to find the best tutorials for making just what I wanted the day before an important exam... Well, calculus i/ii will have to wait

[@bilskirnir_]

I was really wondering about a way to do this. Great video.

[@MrDigitalWorks]

Absolutely awesome tutorial! You can also use an Image Sequence + Offset for the different faces. Keep it up!

[@AchHadda]

Thank you for this one i asked for this tutorial thank you

[@sovietique]

OMG I NEEDED THIS TYSMSMSMSM I WAS EAITING FOR U

[@daisynavarro15]

YESSSS thank you!❤

[@MRkamokun]

Amazing content , i hope to see a video about rigging next time

[@ssg-eggunner]

It's crazy how in few shots it looks more like a vector drawing than a 3d model

[@thegooberator]

I did something almost exactly like this. I just UV unwraped the model my self and pack everything but the face in the bottom half of the texture, then a make a mask for the face. And I made the shader in unity like the video so I had mouth visemes for vrchat, while still meeting excellent quality on the quest.

[@R0cketed]

AWWW!! MY FAV GAME DEVV COMMENTED!!

[@boxerBeto]

I’ll definitely be trying this when I attempt 3D games in Godot. Thanks for sharing!

[@2kyrie]

Loves both tutorials really, easy to learn. It would be awesome a tutorial on rigging on the future if you can please

[@ratfishx2739]

omg thank you so much

[@NEOL1NK]

Back when I used Maya, if I were to do something like this, I'd use something called "Set Driven Key" to assign the different UV values to a custom, keyable attribute assigned to some kind of object on the rig (usually a curve controller), that you could access from the Attributes sidebar, which is essentially Maya's equivalent to Blender's Item tab or Object Properties menu. I do like how visually intuitive it seems to animate this stuff with a bone you move around, although I could also see it getting messy (especially if you wanna have more control over more stuff). I'm wondering if the "Custom Properties" section in Object Properties functions like Maya's custom attributes. Like, maybe you could make a custom property that allows you to move those bones to the different values from Object Properties? That way you'd have the option to do both. I think the custom properties even show up on the Item tab for quick access once you make them.

[@jeromyperez5532]

I was wondering the same thing. I've been learning Blender coming off of Maya and while some things are easier a lot of things are just messier unless you write your own python scripts.

[@sahebsidhu5544]

You should start a discord! Would also love to see videos of how you began learning blender, what resources you used, etc.

[@Haruhi4me]

I no nothing about blender or 3d models or animating but this video made me feel smart

[@MyGenerativeEra]

this is gem video

[@avauok8941]

Thank you so much!

[@thatrat1851]

THANK YOUUUU

[@4epbrk_6rk_6rk]

How timely I started trying to create a character in Blender) I just wanted to have something like this, thanks for the tutorial!)

[@fishsticxz]

very clear and good explanation! i've been meaning to look into this, but the other videos i've seen have looked too long so i hadn't gotten to it... i usually just model facial features to have my characters emote, but this is a good technique to have under your belt too. now the only thing i wonder about is how lowpoly vtubers have 2d texture faces connected to their program of choice, since the unity pack used for creating vtuber and vrchat models expects shape keys, not armature changes for the expressions...

[@ZiosNeon]

great video!! do more pleasee

[@Pelorthecat]

Yeah, this is the one, this is the tutorial I'm looking for :D Thank you so much for video. Gunna make a bunch of animal crossing characters after this! :Đ

[@britneewashington4106]

This art style reminds me of MySims. So cute!

[@kartopod]

Awesome!

[@Drigsof]

I realized a dream, thank you

[@gim-ori]

thanks!

[@adamjohnson8574]

this is the style i want to make a cartoon in lmao so thank you for making a more intuitive less drawn out and fed tutorial on this, question though, say wanted the eyes and the mouth on seperate animations, id just do the same method twice due to the split yeah? new to blender and trying to figure out the easiest paths of animation lol

[@corepunch]

Yep was doing that in a game I released in 2015

[@thebeardedmen]

if you're not scared of expressions, you can have a bone in your rig with a custom property (like an integer) that starts from 0 (cap the minimum), then use this as a driver into a single combine xyz node, then modify the driver to be this expression: value*-0.25. If you want to account for the right side of your textures, you can simply have a boolean toggle, then in the xyz's X value, set it as a driver but make the expression value*(whatever your lateral offset is). To do this without a secondary toggle is a bit more complicated but doable for sure. Just a bit long winded imo.

[@lacruzo]

sounds like a clever way of doing it! wouldn't need as many nodes as well

[@vaniltonjr5530]

bravíssimo!

[@myself_apparently]

i love you my good sir

[@happyc6770]

thank you so so much omg ive been waiting 3 years for a tutorial like this. May I ask how we could export this into unity?

[@itsjessie2004]

I CAN NOT TELL YOU!!! HOW LONG!!!!!!! ive been trying to figure this out, ON MY OWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@sky333suraj]

Keep doing 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@xMpR13]

subscribed🎉

[@diadepedra9004]

Obrigado pela aula, UwU

[@nichasatummyache2510]

I've been rigging transparent face shapes with shape keys that move in front of the face when the key is turned on. This is such a better system that i'm going to impliment lmao

[@lawrence9713]

Still didn't decide how I make the faces of my character for my game. I guess I'll go with this method shown here. But since it has a character creator and skin color can look different for each character, I'll make some extra polygons over the head/face and make eyes and mouth on a transparent background

[@tboxfinn]

Do you know how can I get this faces work on unity?

[@Luluskuy]

Search how to change texture offset via script.

[@noahturiaf4030]

Your models are so good! Will you be making a tutorial on UV wrapping any time soon?

[@andremoreau8390]

His previous video has some pretty good directions on that.

[@edgarulises9442]

wow, incredible tutorial, do you know one that its compatible whit exportation?

[@junpeiiori4720]

Thank you so much. I don't know if you accept suggestions but it would be really helpful if you can show us your animation workflow.

[@RyansWorldINC]

YESSSSSSSSSS

[@Explore205]

Pls make video on environment making using toon shader

[@knairda8282]

This is so cool... Do you know if this setup would work if you put the model in a game engine? Or does the material + bone constraints setup only work in Blender? I've been using Godot and had an issue earlier where an IK setup in Blender doesn't get detected :[ so I'm wondering if it would be like that

[@lacruzo]

yeah unfortunately controlling the material with drivers only works within blender as far as I'm aware

[@One4Smoji8]

If I put blendshapes on the controller bone, do you think this would work if I moved it over to Unity to use for VRChat or VSeeFace?

[@isaacsalvador4188]

rigging next please 🙏

[@albertomanzo5546]

I have a question, do you recommend putting a toonshader onto these models? And if so should we not paint the actual shaded parts in the texture?

[@spiky6628]

tutorial on low poly curly or wavy hair pls?

[@Lalin2296]

I need to know how you rigged the character AMAZING TUTORIALS

[@CharaViolet]

Is it possible for a texture to have a single ambient animation? Like, for example, if I wanted to make a model of my character in my icon, and i wanted the galaxy background of their hair to passively move, would that be possible?

[@Rexcnaut]

How did you get that window to pop up when renaming the bone? at 9:17 EDIT: nvm it's with F2 on windows

[@rootbindev]

I wish I was good at this

[@CM_edits6023]

Are we able to download the model

[@felipe_villart]

do you teach a course?

[@marcoshenriquearrudadasilv1135]

I really like this tutorial, but it left me one doubt. Can I go from face 1 to face 4 without going through the other faces? Do I need to edit the interpolation curve in order to do that?

[@lacruzo]

Yeah you would just need to change the interpolation of the keyframes to constant, forgot to mention!

[@mactol7239]

Are the animations importable to UE5?

[@ano.s.6134]

Now the real question is how would this work of exported to an actual game engine like unity or unreal?

[@kokosechsech2559]

i really like your videos. can you also rig this character please? i need help on that

[@DearBearDrinkingBeer]

I have blender version 3.2, I do not have such a node as converter -> Mix. There is Mix RGB, but there is no vector. What should I do?

[@lacruzo]

the Mix RGB node should still work the same way. Just need to imagine the two slots as A and B here.

[@slaps9402]

my transofrm tool doesn't have the boxes for manually setting the position for x and y. how did you get that in the video? was there an update to clip studio?

[@lacruzo]

it might be a setting hidden by default. should find it in the sub tool detail (wrench icon)

[@slaps9402]

@@lacruzo thx! for posterity. It's not an option in clip 1.0 ;-; . I just chucked money at them for 3.0 and now I got the option to use the position feature in the wrench settings. I'm looking at my 1.0 and 3.0 transform tool settings options side by side. I hate clip so much for making us pay for basic features like this >:^(

[@porkyorcy1715]

😍🙏🙏🙏

[@HayHay-tc1rl]

Still beginner learning blender for about a few days, since my focus of learning is to make character model like in the video and what's the most efficient and proper way to learn??

[@Luluskuy]

The most fast way to learn blender is try model something from the start. The actual skill you (and many blender users) want to build is not blender skill, but 3D modelling skills. It takes time, but it's worth it. If you want to madel characters like this the do it exactly as he says. After that try to make a character of your own using the techniques that you have learned.

[@BasheerShaik-yh5bx]

Check out his last video