Is there a way to turn a character's head without using Look At? What I'm thinking is I'd like to have a character shake his head while maintaining eye contact with someone else. Is this possible?

- Ron T.

It's not clear from your wording, but apparently you know that Look At will prevent the head from shaking.

So first, release the Look At just before the shake.

Then you can use the Motion Edit feature to manually turn the actor's head toward the other guy. Then move right on the timeline and tilt the head one way, and move on the timeline again and tilt the other way.

If you need to improve the eye contact, and you probably will, use the Face Keys feature of Facial Animation to correct the eyes at each Motion keyframe.

On the far side of the shake, you can Look At again.

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

You can animate head movements (and any other movements) using the Motion Layer in iClone. Do you have the Pro version of iClone? You can do this in the Standard version as well, but it is harder since you don't have a timeline. The timeline allows you to make any adjustments afterwards, such as timing.

Select your character and then select Avatar => Animation => Motion. On the right you'll see the Edit Motion Layer button, which will open an editor where you can change the position of various limbs as well as the head. I did a little GIF animation: the woman is attentively listening to the man, as it should be :P!

I started out with an Idle motion for her and then adjusted the head. I also added some facial expressions with the Puppeteering tool. A lot is possible, but it takes time (and patience) to learn it all.

BTW, both characters are from M. Aparicio (from the 3DSuit and DressWizard packs, respectively).

---

Also dont forget that you animate the "look at weight" between the "eyes" and the "head". So if you want to do a head motion and keep eye contact you can move the slider weight all the way to "eyes" and once you are done doing your head motion you can set the weight all the way down to "head" again.

Hope this helps,

Stuckon3d



Product Specialist

My iClone 7 gallery

My IMDB

Thanks for all the replies, you guys.



Yup, you're right. What I was doing was adding a cube, having it move right to left once every second and using "Look At" so the character shook his head. Then I made the cube invisible.



Rather than a tilt, I'm looking to do a shake, but this is useful to know for other things. Thanks. I did end up finding the answer in the Face Keys panel which I'd forgotten all about, so thanks, too, for the reminder!



Yes, it just seemed like the only way to go for what I want to do.



I tried looking in there, but maybe I have something set wrong because the only head control I can see is for rotating around the character's X axis... You know, if I was going to have him do a nod of the head like he was saying, "Yes." I've attached a screenshot to show you what I saw.

Perhaps I'm not using the correct QWER mode? I tried Rotate and Move, but neither gave me the ability to rotation around the Z axis.



Nice demo! I hope you didn't go to too much trouble. What am I saying??? This IS iClone; with your skill and experience, you likely did this in about three minutes! :)



I'd forgotten about the Puppeteering panel as well. Thanks!



You can say THAT again! I took a quick look at iClone a couple of years ago and was amazed at all the gizmoes and gadgets then! Now? I'm overawed, overjoyed and overwhelmed.



Thanks for pointing this out, Cris. I would have totally missed that. Well, maybe someday I would have seen it. :)



Boy, that is tricky to get the hang of.

With all the input from you guys, I did manage to do what I was trying to do using the Face Key panel. But now I find I have another question...

What's the difference between the Face Key panel and the Puppeteering panel? They both seem to do the same thing except that Puppeteering also has controls for making overall changes.

Again, thanks for all the info!

- Ron T.

I am not fond of seeing "read the manual" in software forums, but there is a time and a place for this recommendation--when it's in the best interest of the user.

I think this is the time and place. Spend just a few minutes with the online Help, and it will repay you many times over. Or, if you just can't get into manuals, look at the many, many video tutorials at Youtube.

To answer your question, Face Keys sets the position of features at a single key in the timeline. It's perfectly described by its own name. Puppeteering is just that: it creates a continuous stream of new animation keys *while the current character animation is running," by means of puppeteering.

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

Well, I suppose you have a point. RTFM. I do have an aversion to manuals, I admit it. I usually watch the videos and at least do a keyword search (or two or three) through the manual first before asking questions, but in this case, I didn't know which video(s) to watch and the keyword searches turned up nothing that seemed applicable.

The feedback I got from you guys did help me figure out where to look, so I thank you again. Since body movements and facial animation are separated in iClone, it didn't occur to me to watch the videos for facial animation to learn about turning the head. And finding a 'handle' to rotate the head in only one axis really threw me off.


- Ron T.

We are spoiling you terribly, but I will give you one more. The Motion Editor has two kinds of settings, controlled by whether Move or Rotate is selected in the main toolbar. I'm not talking about the Move setting, you will have to read... If the "manipulator" is set to Rotate, you can rotate. To change the axis of the rotation, right-click on the joint. There are keyboard shortcuts for all these as well, I believe.

---

I do love to be spoiled. :)



Oh, now I get it. Click but don't hold the button down and each click cycles through to the next axis.

Now that I know what I'm looking for, I even found it in the manual. :D

Thanks a whole bunch, Animagic.

- Ron T.