← ArchivePaper2023
Eyes Without a Face: Integrating Detached Facial Features into Pixar's Character Pipeline
Pipeline for Win or Lose characters with unconnected floating facial features, combining 2D graphic expressiveness with 3D environment integration.
Abstract
From an asset creation perspective, Pixar’s first long formseries, Win or Lose, had a daunting number of featured characters. In addition to the large scope of the project, the design pushed further into the stylistic trend of somerecent Pixar films - favoring graphic shape language infacial expressions. The methodology that was so successful in those projects simply wouldn’t scale to the number of characters we needed to deliver. In terms of articulation, we knew that one thing that made wide, round mouths difficult was maintaining smooth surfaces as the topology skewed and distorted around the nose and cheeks. That insight prompted the question: “What if they weren’t connected?” While we pursued this idea with a focus on the advantages in asset creation, when those assets were put in the hands of animators, we found that the approach yielded an unexpected quality to the animation: combining the graphic nature of 2D design in a 3D environment.
How to read this
- Category
- Production talk / pipeline (Pixar character pipeline)
- Contributions
- Demonstrates a character pipeline for floating, unconnected facial features driven by the show's graphic shape language
- Shows how detaching features sidesteps topology distortion around the nose and cheeks for wide, round mouths
- Reports an emergent animation quality: 2D graphic design expressiveness within a 3D environment, at series scale
- Context
- Production work for Pixar's series Win or Lose, extending the graphic-shape-language facial trend from recent Pixar films to a large featured-character roster.
- Correctness
- Studio practice, not peer-reviewed; results are production-proven on this specific series and stylistic target, so the detached-feature approach is tied to that graphic design intent rather than a general-purpose rig solution.
- Clarity
- Highly accessible and motivation-driven; a single read conveys the idea and the scaling problem it solves.
- How to read it
- Read once for the asset-creation and articulation motivation; revisit only if you want the practical handoff details of how detached features behave in animators' hands.
Related work
- Transferring a Labeled Generic Rig to Animate Face Models 2006 / AMDO
- Easy Rigging of Face by Automatic Registration and Transfer of Skinning Parameters 2010 / ICCVG
- Example-Based Facial Rigging 2010 / SIGGRAPH
- Creating Infinite Characters From a Single Template: How Automation May Give Super Powers to 3D Artists 2024 / SIGGRAPH
Keywords
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