Adding Face Keys - Muscle vs. Detail

You may use face keys to fine tune your animation, layer subtle expressions to your characters; or sometimes you can use face key to enhance the accuracy of lip-sync, e.g. jaw bone. Click the Face Key button under the Facial Animation modify panel to create individual face keys by adjusting either the Muscle or Detail tab.

Muscle

Muscle allows you to adjust each region highlighted on the face, but it cannot fine-tune the details of the face. When you are using Muscle mode to add facial expression keys, you can control up to 19 regions.

1. Select the character and go to Animation/Facial Animation/Face Key .

2. The Face Key window appears. Select the Muscle tab.

3. Highlight one of the features.

4. Move your mouse in the interaction area to create a new facial key.

   

5. Drag the timeline slider to a new position.

6. Create another expression to blend in with the first key. Now, both keys appear in the Facial Layer track.

   

   You may click the Reset All button to return to the default facial expression before creating another face key.

Detail

When you are in the Detail mode, you can control up to 54 facial points and set keys for each point. By using the Detail feature in iClone you can fine-tune the area of each selected feature point. Then you can control the points from the right, front and left perspectives.

If you have the Mirror button enabled, you can then select the points from both sides of the face. Then you can move both sides of the features at the same time.

Mirror: Enabled	Mirror: Disabled

When you have a single side selected, you can then position the selected side.