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Added 04 Aug 06 Updated Today
Publisher Sybex
Publication Date 2007-05-07
Paperback - 368 Pages
ISBN 0471789208
?TIEM Design
Crafting believable facial animation is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding aspects of 3D graphics. Done right, this art breathes life into otherwise deadpan faces.
In this extraordinary book, professional animator Jason Osipa teaches you how to achieve realistic facial modeling and animation. Using detailed practical examples complemented with high-quality images and a touch of humor, Osipa leads you from design and modeling to rigging and animation. The CD and full-color insert demonstrate techniques you can use to fine-tune your facial animations.
Reviewed and approved by Alias|Wavefront, Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right, uses the Academy Award(r) winning Maya(r) 3D animation and effects software as the focus for its examples, yet the principles and techniques are described in ways that will be helpful to anyone working on facial modeling and animation.
Mastering the Face
Start out by getting familiar with the range of possible facial expressions, then focus on animating and modeling the mouth, eyes and brows. When you’re ready to bring it all together, you can generate a scene from concept to completion. Topics covered include:
- Understanding how the whole face affects expression
- Learning visimes and lip sync techniques
- Constructing a mouth and mouth keys
- Building emotion through the eyes and brows
- Building interfaces to easily connect and control your models
- Skeletal setup, weighting, and rigging
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
He writes with a dry wit and a confidence born from experience. The book is friendly but also loaded with content and precise in its directions. "I am by no means God?s gift to animation, but I do pretty well at making a talking head look like a living one, not just a set of gums flapping." This is not a how-to manual, but a richly detailed guide to achieving the right movements for a given situation and emotion. The companion CD includes all the pieces readers will need in order to work along with the text: models (both realistic and stylized ?toon characters), lip-synching samples, finished Quicktime movies, and even a copy of Maya Personal LE. (More info and some movies can be found at jasonosipa.com.)
Readers move from "Getting to Know the Face," to synching audio, working on the mouth, eyes, and brows, and rigging. Osipa has created a methodology for facial animation that gets results and makes the process fun. The book can be used as a step-by-step guide for learning new skills or finessing techniques, or as a reference book for troubleshooting specific expressions (for example, "happy eyes," "frustration," and "sneers" are all in the index). Although the projects are presented using Maya, the concepts involved pertain to animation in general.
There are lots of production tips and, in Chapter 13, case studies using five scripted scenes. Readers can even begin with this last chapter, watching the movies (they?re funny!) and enjoying Osipa?s debates as he works through animating his face telling a lame bartender joke or a sassy ?toon gal weighing the pros and cons of pink and blue bows. This hip writer knows what he?s talking about, even when it?s his own animated mug that?s doing the talking! --Angelynn Grant
With detailed examples, high-quality professional images, and a touch of humor, this is the fully revised and updated second edition of Jason Osipa’s best-selling book on facial animation. You’ll learn the basics of design, modeling, rigging, and animation-while mastering exciting new techniques for stretch-and-squash deformation, advanced blend extraction, and the latest software tools. Walk through the author’s detailed analysis of sample animations and discover how to add nuance and sophistication to your designs.
Full of insights drawn from years of professional experience, this book provides the focused and practical information you need to create believable facial animations.
- Learn visimes and lip sync techniques
- Construct a mouth and mouth keys
- Explore the process of facial landmarking
- Master the cartoon techniques of squash and stretch
- Harness the latest advanced blend extraction tools
- Create interfaces for your faces
- Understand skeletal setup, weighting, and rigging
Control faces with the book’s powerful rig and learn how skin moves to make various shapes and expressions
Master powerful stretch-and-squash (and squoosh!) techniques
Featured on the CD
Fine-tune your facial animations with the techniques demonstrated on the companion CD. Content includes tutorial files, lip sync samples, models, textures, and more.
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
With detailed examples, high-quality professional images, and a touch of humor, this is the fully revised and updated second edition of Jason Osipa’s best-selling book on facial animation. You’ll learn the basics of design, modeling, rigging, and animation-while mastering exciting new techniques for stretch-and-squash deformation, advanced blend extraction, and the latest software tools. Walk through the author’s detailed analysis of sample animations and discover how to add nuance and sophistication to your designs.
Full of insights drawn from years of professional experience, this book provides the focused and practical information you need to create believable facial animations.
- Learn visimes and lip sync techniques
- Construct a mouth and mouth keys
- Explore the process of facial landmarking
- Master the cartoon techniques of squash and stretch
- Harness the latest advanced blend extraction tools
- Create interfaces for your faces
- Understand skeletal setup, weighting, and rigging
Control faces with the book’s powerful rig and learn how skin moves to make various shapes and expressions
Master powerful stretch-and-squash (and squoosh!) techniques
Featured on the CD
Fine-tune your facial animations with the techniques demonstrated on the companion CD. Content includes tutorial files, lip sync samples, models, textures, and more.
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
* Fully updated for today’s trends and techniques, it includes coverage of new tools and software that have emerged since the previous edition
* Features new squash-and-stretch deformation and blend extraction techniques, more models, and revised, professional-caliber art
* The CD-ROM includes the Maya Personal Learning Edition, models, textures, tools, lip-synch samples, and completed animations
* Foreword by celebrity animator Jason Schleifer, whose credits include Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy
He writes with a dry wit and a confidence born from experience. The book is friendly but also loaded with content and precise in its directions. "I am by no means God’s gift to animation, but I do pretty well at making a talking head look like a living one, not just a set of gums flapping." This is not a how-to manual, but a richly detailed guide to achieving the right movements for a given situation and emotion. The companion CD includes all the pieces readers will need in order to work along with the text: models (both realistic and stylized ’toon characters), lip-synching samples, finished Quicktime movies, and even a copy of Maya Personal LE. (More info and some movies can be found at jasonosipa.com.)
Readers move from "Getting to Know the Face," to synching audio, working on the mouth, eyes, and brows, and rigging. Osipa has created a methodology for facial animation that gets results and makes the process fun. The book can be used as a step-by-step guide for learning new skills or finessing techniques, or as a reference book for troubleshooting specific expressions (for example, "happy eyes," "frustration," and "sneers" are all in the index). Although the projects are presented using Maya, the concepts involved pertain to animation in general.
There are lots of production tips and, in Chapter 13, case studies using five scripted scenes. Readers can even begin with this last chapter, watching the movies (they’re funny!) and enjoying Osipa’s debates as he works through animating his face telling a lame bartender joke or a sassy ‘toon gal weighing the pros and cons of pink and blue bows. This hip writer knows what he’s talking about, even when it’s his own animated mug that’s doing the talking! --Angelynn Grant
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Hi, everyone.
I bought this book. It’s a huge disappointment for me. You beter buy the anzovin studio tutorial DVD’s and look for a freeware JAVA applet called JLIPSYNC, use MIMIC or VOICE O MATIC This book makes it way to complicated.
Basicly all you have to do is analyse your vocal track roughly not word by word or letter by letter. That doesn’t work. Try to analyse your track phonetical and see where THE LIPS AND THE MOUTH CHANGES. LESS IS MORE IN LIPSYNC. Add eyebrow wrinkles and nose up or down movements. Look at the pose your character is in. SEE THE LIPSYNC TOGETHER WITH THE POSE YOUR CHARACTER IS IN. That will work.
Reading this book won’t.
I am a 3d professional artist for a long time, I have to say I have read hundreds of books, watched hours of training videos, read pages of internet tutorials anything related to 3d animation. No other training material comes even close to things I have learned reading this book. It is a treasure that you have to keep somewhere close to your desk as a reference, whether you are modeling a character head, building blend shapes or rigging . I have used the techniques successfully in many projects. I thank Jason Osipa for writing this book and for teaching me how to build superior 3D characters. This is my second SS book, I also have the first edition. This 2nd edition is a lot different then the first.
Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done RightThis book is a very good resource for computer animators.
Have you ever worked with a facial rig that was based on a set of sliders in the viewport? Many of the most popular free rigs use that method these days. Well guess what -- it’s sometimes called "the Osipa method," and it was popularized by the first edition of this book.
As a novice character rigger, this book opened my eyes to an entirely new way of looking at facial modeling, rigging, and animation. I can not recommend it highly enough. These days when I create a character, I always have two books within quick reach: The Art of Rigging (by CG Toolkit, only available from their website) and Stop Staring.
I hate to say this, but didn’t learn much more than which I had already been able to get from online tutorials and forums.
I am a professional 3D character artist and I own a previos version of this book.
I am using Jason Osipa’s method of facial set-up for all my characters, for animated film and games. Not only it is the system that’s easy to use and understand, but it produces very attractive and believable facial expressions. I would recommend this book to anyone who ever touches digital characters, but especially to 3D modelers and riggers.
The second updated edition of STOP STARING: FACIAL MODELING AND ANIMATION DONE RIGHT offers far more than just introductory coverage: it uses high-quality professional images combined with humor to provide a revised, updated set of basics on design, modeling and animation - including elements which differentiate top-quality productions from mediocre results. From learning lip sync techniques and understanding facial landmarking to using advanced blend extraction tools and building realistic shapes, STOP STARING holds plenty of diagrams and pictures throughout and is a ’must’ for any serious computer animation collection.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
This is a great book and I highly recommend it for anybody interested in character animation. Although the author uses Maya and a few examples describe Maya-specific functionality, most of the material in here is very broadly applicable, making this an indispensable book for Blender animators as well.
Readers of my book Introducing Character Animation with Blender should definitely check this one out.
This book clarifies the issues for anyone doing character animation. The modeling of a face takes on a strategic importance and the mesh must anticipate the demands made on it by animation.
If you want to animate a face, this book is for you.
Osipa’s approach to toon rigging (and rigging in general) is unique, new, innovative and very simple to grasp and implement. I don’t want to give away the genius of Chapter 13, because I THINK you need to buy this book!
You want to know how they "might have" rigged Elastigirl in The Incredibles? It’s so simple you’ll kick yourself in the shin for not thinking of it yourself.
This whole book is filled with rigging know-how by a lover of cartoons. His primary goal is making excellent facial animation. Something this industry sorely lacks! And this is the book that documents his experiences and skills. Learn from it. Be a better rigger.
If you want to be a Rigger or Character TD for toons or even photo-real characters, these techniques will be omni-present in studios (big and small) in the next year. Get this book and read it cover to cover so I don’t have to kick you in the shin.
This book has a lot of useful information but the author’s somewhat patronising and self-congratulatory tone sometimes makes you want to stop reading. Let me give you a couple of examples from the very start of the book (note that these are quotes from the actual book’s text, not "marketing" material):
Introduction: "You’ll learn much of what you could learn elsewhere while also picking up more pertinent valuable information you couldn’t learn elsewhere."
Page 3: "They saw how I took something so complex, so daunting, so evil, and made it so easy, simple, and - dare I say it? - fun!"
Page 6: "It’s very easy to learn how to do this, but very hard to master; luckily you have a good coach."
In addition to this, a lot of the book’s contents are about... the rest of the book’s contents. Some chapters start with several paragraphs about... the rest of that chapter. And many paragraphs end with "cliffhangers" (ex., "This is not necessary; I’ll explain why in the next paragraph.", when he could simply move "This is not necessary" to that next paragraph and explain straight away). The overall effect is a bit like an infomercial.
Having said that, the book does have some very good tips about animating and modelling realistic human faces (and especially about how to model them so that they are easier to animate). The examples use terminology from Maya, but people used to other 3D packages will have no problem understanding them.
Cartoon-style characters are also covered, but the models used are mostly humanoid and fairly realistic (think anime), so if you’re interested in ways of conveying emotion with more extreme (or more abstract) characters, you might want to look elsewhere (ex., George Maestri’s books and videos, Looney Tunes cartoons, Uderzo’s drawings, etc.). The modelling tips and techniques described in this book will probably still come in handy, though.
Bottom line: this is one of the best books available on the subject of facial modelling and animation (granted, there aren’t many). As long as you manage to get past the patronising attitude and the unnecessary "build-up" of some chapters (both of which are worse at the start of the book - or maybe I just learned to ignore them), you’ll almost certainly learn something, even if you’re an experienced animator.
This is a great book has everything I need to learn and to know about 3D Animation. I’m so happy for this book :)
Personaly I find them more interesting and there seems to be more demand for that type of animation in movies and ads.
If you own only one book about facial animation it should be this one. A completely innovative approach to facial animation makes animating a talking head with emotions a breeze. Read it!
I can’t possibly say enough good things about this book and its author! The first thing which struck (and stuck with) me is that Osipa is an animator first and foremost; Osipa spoke my language from the first page! Basically, he simplifies the many elements which go into facial animation and has come up with a virtually fool-proof yet expandable system based on combining several blend shapes at a time into an extremely flexible series of facial expressions! Previous books either left me marooned with a gazillion blend shape sliders, or otherwise barely explained the process at all in any clear terms. Osipa’s book concentrates on facial animation as it applies to lip sync and facial acting!
Using his own head as a model, Osipa also takes the reader through a quick yet very complete facial modelling course, which concentrates on modelling the head with animation in mind and avoiding many of the pitfalls we might otherwise overlook. Particular attention is given to the eye area, the mouth area, and less obvious but equally important areas such as the teeth and eyebrows (all of which figure in to quality facial animation). Subsequent sections deal with the blend shape process and modelling the various expressions themselves. His advice here is priceless, and he constantly reminds us of basic facial proportions and relationships and how they change as the facial expression changes. He also applies these "rules" to more cartoony heads. ALL of this is well-represented by examples on the accompanying support CD. There is very little room for error!
Perhaps the most important feature of this book, however, are the chapters concerning the rigging and weighing of the head, and setting up the facial controls (things many animators tend to shy away from). Had it not been for Osipa’s book, I probably would have shied away from the expression editor entirely...no one had ever explained how it works in any of the other books I’ve purchased...but Osipa eases the reader into the magical realm of creating expressions. To make it even easier, the support CDs contain the control sliders and expressions. All I had to do was copy and paste them, and Lo! it worked! By seeing expressions in action, I tried a few of my own and they worked as well! Osipa should be covered in gold for this chapter alone!
Finally, Osipa presents his own take on how to approach lip sync. It may or may not be to everyone’s liking, but it does work and it is well-founded on what real dialogue looks like on film. Rather than the traditional phonemes (where the facial expressions are based on the sounds one usually hears), Osipa uses "visimes", a more visual breakdown of a dialogue. Instead of vowel/consonant sounds, he explains visimes in terms of "open", "closed", "narrow", "wide", &c. His control system, however, can be used for both his "visime" method as well as the more traditional phoneme method.
I’ve said a lot already but there are a few more things I wish to share with potential readers of this book. ALL books have a few warts, and this one is no exception, but the warts are few and very far between! The most significant "wart" is that some of the support files were written for older versions of Maya and may not work on newer versions, but Osipa maintains a website with updates, and perhaps newer editions of the book have already addressed this. Another relatively minor inconvienience is the flow of the book. One must jump ahead a few chapters and then back a few in order to build the head, which can make things a bit confusing the first time through. There is a method to this madness, however, and with patience and repeated readings (you WILL want to read this until you’ve memorized it!), it isn’t a problem. There are one or two places in the book where Osipa’s wonderful sense of humor might temporarily confuse the reader, but studying the support files cleared up most of my own confusion.
Perhaps the BEST thing of all is Osipa himself. When all else failed and I still couldn’t figure something out, he actually answered my e-mail questions! He is an author who supports his product, and will endeavor to help all who ask. I’ve practically worn out my first copy of this book but not in vain! Once mastered, the contents of this book will bring a new confidence to any MAYA animator and open up a whole new world hitherto available only to a knowledgable few! If I could give this book six and a half or even ten stars, I would! Bravo Zulu, Jason Osipa! WELL DONE INDEED!!!
I recently finished a big project that required sync and realistic facial expressions, and reading this book was like being bathed in a pure, heavenly light. Osipa guides you through the creation of numerous plausible blend shapes and helps you avoid the most common errors. Before I bought this, I was doing everything wrong. The range of emotion that this system is capable of expressing is near total, and certainly enough for any project I can think of short of a major motion picture.
Don’t make the same mistakes I did the first time around. Unless you have years of instruction on human anatomy in motion under your belt, buy this book before you attempt any kind of lip sync or serious facial animation. It will save you from the pain of building inaccurate shapes and watching your character painfully contort into each of them to strain out an expression. The information Osipa provides on lip sync in the age of computer animation is very, very valuable to someone like myself who has tried to sync in the past and failed. The facial rig that the book provides in the attached CD and the automatic scripts that apply it are, alone, worth twice the modest price of the book.
I have a lot of marginally useful books on 3d that contain just enough information to cash in, but this resource is clearly heartfelt. Osipa wants to teach you how it is done and his easygoing style makes it a pleasure to read.
This is a great book to get started with. It’s a little old, so I’m sure there have been a lot of technical advances since it came out, but the principles are still the same. Everyone should read this to gain a better understanding of good animation principles. They will also gain a good basis for understanding facial animation setups. You can’t lose.
It is a wonderful way to get very expressive facial animation.
Jason Osipa’s technique involves makeing multiple blend shaps then useing his controller which is a spline box split into for parts. What is really nice is you can either controll both sides of the mouth or eye’s or brow, or move them individually. This makes it very easy to get great original non semitrical expressions.
For those who haven’t done alot of modeling it goes through how to model your character’s faces so they can be animated useing his techniques. For me this was the one part of the book I skimmed over. If you have ever done the joan of arc tutorial or modeled useing edged extrustion then you know what he is talking about, and how to do it.
The rest of the book is a easy read with good solid steps that you can easily follow to acomplish all of the blend shaps, facial rig and controllers. It walks you over the basic in lip syncing, and animation as well.
My only complaint with the whole book is that the controller that you make is in the view window your working in. But that is extremely small issue. And is one that can be solved be breaking off a view port and placing it somewhere else on your screen.
On the whole Jason Osipa’s completely unique approach to facial animation is refreshing and very usefull. I don’t care what level animator you are. This book is a great resource, for making a process that usually has one scrolling great lengths of blend shapes and wasting alot of time playing around finding the right combonation to get that one perfect look.
I knew before purchasing that this book was centered around Maya, and understandably so, as it is the industry standard. However, as a trueSpace user I found this book to be very useful. We can’t exactly set up rigs and controls the way Jason does in Maya, but the theories and other ideas presented in the book hold true no matter what application you are using.
If you are serious about lipsync / facial animation, I highly recommend this book.
And also check out Keith Lango’s tutorial:
http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/lipSync.htm
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