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Advanced Facial Rigging
Course introduction
  1. 01

    Introduction

    Free
1. Model preparation
  1. 01

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  2. 02

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  3. 03

    Scale, symmetry and resolution

  4. 04

    Aligning to world orientation

  5. 05

    Modeling adjustments

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    Managing the outliner

2. Initial bones
  1. 01

    Neck and head

  2. 02

    Jaw

  3. 03

    Mouth

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  5. 05

    Nose

3. Lips
  1. 01

    3 Curve principle

  2. 02

    Ribbon mesh

  3. 03

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  9. 09

    Lip zipper

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  2. 02

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  3. 03

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    Concept

  2. 02

    Initial shape keys

  3. 03

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  4. 04

    Mouth open corrective shape keys

  5. 05

    Mouth squash

9. Additional deformers
  1. 01

    Cheek puff

  2. 02

    Additional lattices

  3. 03

    Lip pucker

  4. 04

    Lip compress

  5. 05

    Nostril shape keys

10. Control widgets
  1. 01

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3. Lips

Deformation bones

Rik Schutte
Rik Schutte Author
License CC-BY
Report Problem

With the pointer bones correctly in place and following the ribbon mesh, we can now start creating the actual deformation bones. These bones will be simply parented to their pointer bone and will ultimately deform the lips. Each lip deformation bone will be influencing a single edgeloop of the lips, resulting in the ability of micro adjusting the lips for the animator.

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4 comments
Aayush
Aayush
April 26th, 2026

Hi, when i box select the duplicated stretch bones and trying to color them red and change it to armature defined. only active selected bones get changed, rest remain as it is :( i dont know whats going on.

Rik Schutte
Rik Schutte
May 29th, 2026

@Aayush Make sure to hold 'Alt' when applying the color change, this should apply the color to all of your selected bones.

Denys
Denys
March 12th, 2026

I don't get with function of stretch bone here? What difference if we just use def bone witch parent to null?

Rik Schutte
Rik Schutte
March 12th, 2026

Hey Denys, I assume you mean the empties on the lip ribbon as 'null'? The stretch bones are there to point towards the lip ribbon mesh, therefore the def bones get not only location value, but also rotational influence from the stretchbones. If the def bones would be parented straight to the empties, they would only get location values. let me know if i understand your point.

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