How do you optimize your face rig for performance and quality?

1 Plan your face rig

Before you start building your face rig, you need to have a clear idea of what kind of expressions and movements you want your character to have. This will help you decide on the level of detail and complexity of your face rig, as well as the best approach and tools to use. For example, you can use blend shapes, bones, joints, deformers, or a combination of these to create your face rig. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of performance, quality, and ease of use. You also need to consider the style and genre of your animation, as well as the target platform and audience. For instance, if you are creating a cartoon character for a mobile game, you might want to use a simpler and lighter face rig than if you are creating a realistic character for a high-end film.

2 Optimize your geometry

One of the most important factors that affect the performance and quality of your face rig is the geometry of your character. The geometry is the mesh or the surface that defines the shape and appearance of your character. The more polygons or vertices your geometry has, the more detailed and smooth your character will look, but also the more heavy and slow your face rig will be. Therefore, you need to optimize your geometry by reducing the number of polygons or vertices as much as possible, without losing the essential features and details of your character. You can use various tools and techniques to optimize your geometry, such as retopology, decimation, subdivision, and level of detail (LOD).

3 Manage your blend shapes

Blend shapes are one of the most common and powerful methods to create facial expressions and movements for your character. Blend shapes are basically different versions of your geometry that can be blended or mixed together to create different shapes. For example, you can have a blend shape for smiling, frowning, blinking, etc. However, blend shapes can also be very heavy and slow, especially if you have many of them or if they have a lot of vertices. Therefore, you need to manage your blend shapes by using only the ones that you really need, and by minimizing the number of vertices that change between each blend shape. You can also use blend shape compression or simplification to reduce the size and complexity of your blend shapes.

4 Use smart deformers

Deformers are another method to create facial expressions and movements for your character. Deformers are basically modifiers or nodes that can deform or change the shape of your geometry in various ways. For example, you can use a lattice deformer to warp or bend your geometry, or a cluster deformer to move a group of vertices. Deformers can be very useful and flexible, but they can also be very expensive and slow, especially if you have many of them or if they affect a large area of your geometry. Therefore, you need to use smart deformers by choosing the ones that are most efficient and suitable for your purpose, and by limiting the scope and influence of each deformer. You can also use deformer caching or baking to improve the performance of your deformers.

5 Test and tweak your face rig

The final step to optimize your face rig for performance and quality is to test and tweak it. Testing your face rig means checking how it behaves and looks in different scenarios and conditions, such as different lighting, camera angles, animation clips, and render settings. Tweaking your face rig means adjusting and fine-tuning the parameters and settings of your face rig components, such as the weights, values, drivers, and connections of your blend shapes, bones, joints, deformers, etc. Testing and tweaking your face rig will help you identify and fix any issues or problems that might affect the performance and quality of your face rig, such as glitches, errors, artifacts, or slowdowns.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?