Mapping Facial Bones

In addition to the body motions, a non-standard character now can also talk (with lip-sync data) and act out bone-based facial expressions. To start defining the parameters for your character's facial animation, you first need to designate the facial bones of the character and give it a correct hierarchy grouping. Then switch to the Face/Bone Mapping section and map facial bones to the Eyes and the Jaw. After this, your character will be able to animate its eyes and jaw easily.

If the character contains more facial bones other than the bones mentioned above it allows for more complex and exquisite facial expressions after being converted into iClone.

Mapping Eye Bones

1. Make sure that you are in the characterization procedure and the Active box is enabled.
   
2. Switch to the Face / Extend Mapping page by clicking the button with a head icon above the dummy pane.
   
   The modify panel will switch to the Face / Extended Bone mapping mode.
   
   Please note that the child bones under the head bones will be automatically put under the Face node and marked in light green.
   
3. Select the left eye bone from the Scene Tree, 3D Viewer or the Bone List under the Assign Bone Tags.

   Select from the 3D viewer.	Select from the scene tree or the bone list.

   Note:

   Switch to the Move or Rotate tool to transform the bone to check if the selected bone is the correct one.

4. Click the Map to Left Eye button in order to map the selected bone to the left eye (blue node) of the standard bone hierarchy.

   Click the Map to Left Eye button.	The selected bone node will be move to under the Left Eye (in blue) node.

5. Select the right eye bone from the Scene Tree, 3D Viewer or the Bone List under the Assign Bone Tags.
6. Click the Map to Right Eye button in order to map the selected bone to the right eye (blue node) of the standard bone hierarchy.

   Click the Map to Right Eye button.	The selected bone node will be move to under the Right Eye (in blue) node.

   Note:

   After setting the eye bones, you may set the rotation limits for the eyes in the Expression Editor. If you find the mapping is incorrect, then click the Map to Face button to move the bone node back to under the face node.

Mapping Jaw Bone

1. Select the jaw bone (and tongue or lower lip bones, if any) from the Scene Tree, 3D Viewer or the Bone List under the Assign Bone Tags.

   Select from the 3D viewer.	You are able to either select the parent node or multi-select the connected child nodes.

   Note:

   Switch to the Move or Rotate tool to transform the bone to check if the selected bone is the correct one.

2. Click the Map to Jaw button in order to map the selected bone to the jaw (blue node) of the standard bone hierarchy.

   Click the Map to Jaw button.	The selected bone node will be move to under the Jaw (in blue) node.

3. Click the Convert button to leave the Convert to Non-standard mode. The data of the mapped eye and jaw bones will be recorded into the character.

   Note:

   After setting the jaw bone, you can set the transformation limits of the jaw in the Expression Editor so that you can control the jaw movements in iClone. Please note that if you want to use the lower lip bones to create expressions in the Muscle and Custom tabs of the Expression Editor, then please set these bones into the Face category instead of Jaw. The eye and jaw bones can then be used for basic eyeball and jaw animations. There is no need to map the head bone because the head bone has already been mapped in the Bone Mapping task. The other bones (not set to eyes and jaw) under the Head bone will be used to create advanced bone-based facial expressions. However, you need to set the muscle behavior in the Expression Editor before converting the character to iClone.