Animated Textures for Facial Expressions?

Hello y’all,

I’m reporting in once more to ask for some help and advice. I’m learning very, very slowly, and here’s my latest interest/hurdle:

Since I’m a one-man-band, I’ll probably be using very low poly models in my first game. I still want my characters to have at least a *little *life, of course, so I was thinking of giving them basic facial expressions. Not through morph targets – which I have yet to understand – but through animated textures. Think N64 or PS1 type faces.

After a bit of searching I came across this PDF, which briefly touches on the subject, but it doesn’t really go into detail. It looks like I need to set up some kind of dynamic material that can cycle through multiple textures on demand, but I really don’t know where to start with such a thing. So, any help is appreciated.

Thanks for your time and thought.

Well for doing animated textures for facial expressions a good starting point would be to make up a texture atlas containing all of the expressions you wish to add and the make a material and blueprint that can control the mapping and blend.

Example of an expression atlas.

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs37/i/2008/260/a/9/Halloween_Expression_Sheet_by_FeetOfTheNinjaFroggy.png

The requirements of the atlas is to make sure that all of the expressions match up to registration markers so they don’t float around and aside from the wiring up would be the hard part.

Thanks for responding. I really have no idea what you’re saying, though. Registration markers? Wires? When I said I was a slow learner, I meant very slow.

So, I’m going to bump this, since it’s been a few days and we’ve rolled off onto the third page. I’m still very interested in this and would like some help.

Yoy have to create a material for your characters face. A material is basically is a combination of textures and values that add up to a specific look of an mesh. Learn how to make simple materials, it will help. Open the node editor in your material, put in all the facial exprecions, and let the material change between these depending of different values of your choice.