Sony Pictures Imageworks Facial Rigging Demo Reel

Animation by so many talented Imageworks animators. Alan Hawkins, Josh Beveridge, Jamaal Bradley, Pete Nash, Roger Vizarrd and more.

[@LakeofCrystalclan]

My god while watching CG movies nowadays, as a 3dartist, I always like to think of the topology. Thanks!

[@japanjuliet1649]

Monster house and cloudy with a chance of meatball were my childhood. Love your work!!

[@IconDevco]

The beautiful dance of modelling, rigging, skinning and rendering. And of course all the other bits in between

[@onedo7240]

These all look fantastic for something rendered 12 years ago

[@tomjerry84]

- What are you doing Flint Lockwood? - Ahh~ nothing, just rigging

[@flareb99]

I never understood when people talked about topology porn, now i understand

[@lustantinoanimations5699]

Steve is highly expressive... But I still like Chicken Joe. Simply because he is a chicken.

[@oscarangelo9776]

You prolly dont care at all but does any of you know of a tool to log back into an instagram account?? I stupidly lost my account password. I would appreciate any tips you can offer me.

[@jonasgatlin404]

@Oscar Angelo instablaster ;)

[@carlosmiret35]

really good reel, I love Flint and Surf's up rigs

[@PrimeStone]

Well that's freaking amazing.

[@CarlooJota]

the retopology is perfect

[@DarkHarpuia]

I am repeatedly smashing my head against Blender's Bendy Bones trying to achieve something even remotely similar and going A Little Bit Insane

[@scandell]

For your face rig? Or body?

[@DarkHarpuia]

@@scandell For the face. I have achieved a pretty good level of expressiveness already, but puckered lips are still ABSURDLY hard to get right with bones alone.

[@scandell]

@@DarkHarpuiaif you get your bone constraint "hierarchy" or order of operations correct it all falls in place. You need layers of bone parents and children. Top layer: sphincters into center of mouth pie hole. Mid layer: protrudes forward, child layer rolls outward

[@scandell]

Actually the top top top layer is used for posing smiles and frowns etc. the sphincter constraint should override the smile frown behavior...then the protrusion and roll layers are after all of that.

[@DarkHarpuia]

@scandell so the idea would be to have a topmost layer that handles the biggest movements, and then the inner layers control the finer movements, i.e. those smaller controls are parented to this bigger layer? I hadn't thought of that at all!

[@Leo-lr2qx]

I like how wireframe versions have flat geometry for hair as in video games, i assume they have alpha transparency for preview and full hair rendering for final.

[@scandell]

Nah. That hair was just proxy.

[@JayBirdBlu_117]

Surf's Up [2007] is my #1 Favorite Sony Pictures Animation Movie, as it's my #2 Favorite Movie as well!

[@TF2Scout_YT]

*Flint saying after school and shit is funny af*

[@xingyuli7563]

can't stop laughing while watch last shot lol!! great works !!!

[@goomy_]

1:17 pog

[@onedo7240]

If you can remember something from '08 that clearly...how many corrective blendshapes did Flint have? Also, how many attribute controls did Flint's face have for animators to work with?

[@scandell]

Good questions. Flint had 5 corrective blendshapes on each side of his face. Mostly for the cheek vertices…to fix conflicting control messaging from the mouth corner and the eyelid extremes.

[@scandell]

He had a ton of attribute controls…if I understand your usage of that term. (Everybody has their own colloquialisms) There was about 100 facial expression controls that drove specific emotions…but also many regional controls to tug on. (Translate rotate scale). Credit goes to the great animators like Alan Hawkins who sculpted their own set of camera-cheat facial expressions for each shot. The flexibility and customization of the facial controls at Imageworks on early films like this and Hotel T is what paved the way for more advanced custom controls like you see in Spider-verse. Empowering animators to own the faces as if they could draw them per shot. IMO, Imageworks cultivated the most technically savvy and independent 3D animators in the world. Their entire senior animation team is top notch.

[@onedo7240]

@@scandell I saw an old paper talking about Surf's Up and how you (I think) made this facial animation UI, was it used for this film too?

[@onedo7240]

@@scandell Also did some characters have more facial attributes than others (and yes you do understand the term lol. Value sliders that drive something hooked up to them)

[@10RexTheWolf01]

I love how real Surf's Up looks in comparison to the other's.

[@Cheesecake_lover360]

1:28 its my mannnn

[@isaiahcontreras923]

1:39 oh here's the scene of Monster House

[@MasterCreator1998]

All the characters from Sony Pictures Animation except Monster House.

[@JAconverse231]

Does anyone here know how the hair in most of this characters were made? I see that in the preview it is shown as polígonos, but the render looks realistic. This doesn’t look like XGEN or any other hair simulations I have seen.

[@scandell]

The polygonal hair was just temporary proxy hair.

[@JAconverse231]

Stephen Candell Oh, so they are using a hair generator like XGEN, but they make this temporary polygon hair just for the video?

[@wspomnienia8227]

I dont know if you will answer to this year old comment, but if it is a proxy hair, than why they use hair cards for the top of the head ? Is it haircards all around or is it like a particle system ?

[@efeemachado]

Great job!

[@bunibun8579]

nobody: not a single soul: them: 😋 😗 🙂 😑 🤨 😄 😣 😮 😌 😕

[@mrsmoothbrain9589]

Woulda liked if there was no "nobody"

[@glamrocktomwinters]

That’s a unuse camera angle❤ 1:39

[@megachebu]

it's in there somewhere :D

[@artmediaproduction]

VERY INTERESTED

[@SilverDashies]

0:57 So many time i watched this moment and cant understand, he used clusters or shape keys ?

[@scandell]

Celestia Epic I used joints that slid along the UV space of a subsurface. Thus maintaining volume.

[@dimensionalartist3562]

@@scandell so does that mean that you used a range on nurbs surface?

[@GogglzMUSIC]

Stephen Candell I thought I knew quite a bit about 3D animation until you said that lmao.

[@ghost62370]

@@scandell Do you mean that you're moving follicles ?

[@scandell]

Brokmir Nasgalvoski back then we didn’t have the treasured follicle node. But yes. That’s the ticket.

[@deni_ap]

Fantastic work! Congrats for your talent!

[@kaunghtet4034]

he's not the original animator

[@mdsanima]

you are awesome artist! Now I following you and like this. Keep going.

[@blendernoob64]

So is Brett's facial rig made up of joints or mostly clusters? The deformations on there are incredible and if the rig was made up of joints, that would be mind blowing.

[@scandell]

Joints. All joints.

[@blendernoob64]

@@scandell how the heck did y’all’s weight paint those freaking things?! I have bug bears with Maya’s default weight paint tool so I resort to NGSkinTools with annihilates maya’s default and Blender’s weight paint tools. I doubt that plugin existed back then so that makes this so freaking impressive. Cloudy was one of the films that really showed little me how expressive cgi characters can be, so knowing these guys were joint rigs is just… wow.

[@scandell]

I implemented a proxy weighting mesh. A lo res mesh that basically had a single vertex per joint. Then I transferred the weights to the high detail mesh

[@jhartdesign]

Hi Stephen that clip is so good, and I am not sure how it is done but I am gasping for air watching the characters come alive in a seamless natural way. I wish I can learn the skills... I am a Graphic Designer and have no idea how to get the right training with Autodesk Maya... I feel so inferior. I do want your help .... "Build the board yourself " ~~~~~~~~~ so funny.

[@Remour]

Hi, I'm curious on what of the slides. The mouth at 1:01 looks to be wider in render than in viewport/wireframe. Could you explain how that works?

[@randomcommenter6734]

Probably just a mistake in the wireframe render

[@IsaArts2930]

They only model one side of the face and then mirror it with a tool so they dont have to model both halves of the face

[@RandomUser00025]

1:18 is it a face bug on the mouth ? Very impressive tho

[@motionzdigital]

my friend that is what you call Z-fighting

[@RandomUser00025]

@@motionzdigital oh I didn't know this word thx

[@joscarday5044]

0:31 how you manage to keep the character face-shape while the mouth does extreme expressions?

[@scandell]

That was a trick. The goal here on this film was to maintain a static silhouette during even the most extreme face shapes. Normally we would add Blendshape volume to the cheek so it bulges during smiles. On this phone, we had to apply some vertex relaxers on the checkpoint so they would average out during combine mouth shapes

[@joscarday5044]

​@@scandell Thanks for the reply :D this is very impressive stuff

[@isa_nagiyev]

everything is amazing, but whats wrong with mouse of monkey in 1:18? Geometry overlapping?

[@miracleshappen4483]

Excellent work!

[@GumbalI]

Hmm how do you switch from textures with the animation?

[@justsayin2858]

Hey, awesome demo reel. Just out of interest, since I am seeing mostly cartoony rigs here. I assume you are using a FACS/blendshape based rig with tweakers right? Would be really awesome to know what the standard is, because I am working on my demo reel at the moment and I am unsure what way to approach this. Cheers!

[@scandell]

No FACS...well Monster House did. These rigs are entirely skinCluster based, with a light layer of blendshapes

[@tonycan-yaolin]

請問右圖的頭髮是用左圖的建模做成的嗎?還是用xgen?還是怎麼把模型變成真頭髮??

[@alext6252]

hey ! So amazing rigs! :-) @stephen candell can it be possible to get your tutorials somewhere? i'm ready to buy it if it's possible ! Thanks

[@YGODueltainer]

Ok so for post animate you use hair cards but for final render they subtitue it for hair particles or was it also hair card?

[@tomasrindelmino]

Bravo!

[@MANIAKRA]

Awesome!

[@ayaz1979]

excellent work

[@thisisarobbery2148]

Cameraman: “Alright just smile into the camera!” My fat ass not even knowing what a smile is: 0:31

[@TheDomLouis]

This looks fantastic Stephen! I noticed that no one really does realistic tongue animations? Instead they get around it by positioning the camera below the jaw, looking slightly up, or higher, then looking slightly down so that the tongue, for all intents and purposes, is slightly obscured. Therefore the human brain of those watching just imagines that the correct tongue movements are happening. How many years from now do you think it will be when Disney, Pixar and the rest of the animation world will be able to animate tongues accurately/realistically?

[@zapfsaeule2]

Wow- amazing!!!!

[@RTJ3DCosplay]

there's no bones in the face it seems , just shape keys as there known in blender and a lock item for the eyes

[@scandell]

Actually the majority of what you see her is bone-based.

[@dianabluu]

Do penguins have fur on their body or is it texture only?

[@LyBlackwood_Game]

i think is fur only on first plane scenes, the rest is pure normal map

[@kaysome85]

this looks like an animation meme

[@iamfilipz3289]

you are amazing

[@3deoskill]

Hi Stephen are all the Face Controlls for animation control or are they for motion capturing, the example with the pinguins? I have a client project but I don´t get the facial expressions quality I want..

[@scandell]

Those are just micro tweakers. They are used by animation to make adjustments

[@bulltrades]

I want to learn face rigging can you help me

[@ZUnknownFox]

how do you guys go about making these models ... do you use refernces? do you just start at random? what? sorry if I sound mad I'm just jealous because the best model I've made is a cube.

[@mdmofazzalhossain77]

great

[@RahulKumar-if9wt]

first free hand "sketching" is done on paper than digital illustration for colored visualization and than converted into 3D model

[@ZUnknownFox]

I know that it's just getting the right points the right depth.

[@Som3D]

First of all you need to understand all agles of your character and need to know how to draw cartoon style then you can start drawing your own cartoon character without use of reference then you can bring it to the 3D world

[@renarddubois940]

@@Som3D you forgot to mention that it takes 10 years 6 hours per day in average to reach a similar level than what is displayed in the video and that is just for cartoon character design and modelling..

[@zapfsaeule2]

wish a thousand subscribers and more!!!

[@Lisamlovee]

NAME OF THE MOVIE IS CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS! XD THANK ME LATER...

[@eggdog.2205]

1:05 he was about to say fuck.

[@mypkamax]

So it's made by an american company, whose parent company is a japanese company?

[@meekproductionsmk9465]

Hie Where can I access Demo Reel?

[@RSSpeacemaker]

I feel like Chicken Joe had so many blend spaces initially set up for him that he did not actually need in the end haha. His expression is at least 80% high all the time.

[@BlenderDumbass]

I heard Shia Labeouf's voice. I knew it was him.

[@nahuelflores4720]

podrias pasarme los personajes de lluvia de hamburguesa? tengo problemas con los pelos

[@scandell]

I'm sorry. That's not possible. These character assets are owned by Sony Pictures

[@sphinx9491]

0:46 ?????😆

[@bruhmentus]

IDK but I tried looking up this dude's address and I think it was on sale lmao Don't ask me why I looked up his address.

[@路周-n1y]

👍

[@xanman6334]

Lol shia l bouf is a movie legend

[@katlegoassegaai4644]

I watched both cloudy with a chance of meatballs in cinemas in 3D.

[@katlegoassegaai4644]

And I watched SURF'S UP in cinemas.

[@iamprince9688]

Send me some rigs if u can

[@higorss]

bruh

[@dhartiputraproduction]

Hey sir, I need your help to improve my animation skills 😊.

[@Kane-q6m]

0:30

[@Kane-q6m]

0:30 or 0:31 0:45 or 0:46 0:57 or 0:58 1:12 or 1:13

[@gfxfilms2012]

Beautiful. But illumination is kicking yours and Pixar's butt...

[@scandell]

This work is 12 years old!! Hahaha. Illumination wasn’t even a company back then. :]

[@scandell]

And Sony Imageworks just came out with the Spiderverse...so you may be double wrong.

[@darkgenie3167]

I wouldn’t say that in public...

[@bricodepot1987]

Sony is still at the top level, Illumination is not at Pixar's level yet Imo.

[@higorss]

pixar is the best

[@Matteoo69]

Blender

[@higorss]

?

[@Matteoo69]

@@higorss is the animation app i think

[@higorss]

@@Matteoo69 It's Maya