Welcome to my Facial Setup tutorial for Messiah:Animate. I doubt this is the best way to implement muscle bones but hey, it's simple and it works for me.

If you have any questions/comments about this tutorial feel free to email me.

This tutorial was created using Messiah:Animate 3.3b.

Start out with a regular skeletal setup, head bone and jaw. (Jaw is a child of the head)

Very Important - Hit F5, the Scripts window will pop up on the bottom of the screen. Double-Click CoordSys. On the bottom right of your view window the letters FPWS will appear, click on W. Hit F5 to get rid of the Scripts window.

If you dont do this your bones or nulls will move funkily if they're parented to other bones.

Add a bunch of support bones to the areas you dont want to be deformed. Around the eyes, along the top of the head and the jawline. (The jawline bones should be a child of the jaw bone)

Once they're in hide them to make things easier.

Switch to Shaded-Wireframe mode to make this next part easier.

Create a muscle bone and make it a child of the Head bone, name it Lip_A. Place it on the center of your characters top lip. Clone this bone a bunch of times and place them around the lips (along the geometry is best)

Name the new bones Lip_B, Lip_C and so on. They should all be children of the head bone and not in a chain.

Go back to setup mode, select Lip_A and in the Muscle Bone Target section choose Lip_B. Select Lip_B and have it target Lip_C, Lip_C targets Lip_D and so on. Your last lip bone should target Lip_A.

The lip bones have now formed a ring around the mouth.

Create more muscle bones, place them around the lips, chin and jaw area. Try to place them along geometry if possible to make deformations look better. Any of these bones placed below the lips should be children of the jaw bone.
Go back to setup mode, select the new muscle bones and have them target the bones in the lips.
The mouth should now work, just select one of the lip bones and move it around. If you get any strange deformations you should try changing the position of some bones in setup mode or changing their falloff value.

If really strange areas of the face are deforming add a few support bones in that area to lock it down.

When things are deforming correctly you can hide the bones surrounding the mouth to make your view easier to look at.

Eyebrows are pretty easy to do, create a few muscle bones along the brow. Each bone a child of the head bone (not in a chain). Have Brow_A point towards Brow_B, Brow_B points towards Brow_C and Brow_C points to a Null. (The null is a child of the Head Bone).

Create 2 more muscle bones, each a child of the head bone. Position them above the brow and have them target Brow_A and Brow_B.

That's it for my tutorial, I hope you found it useful!

The character in this tutorial had a separate layer for his eyelids, but if your characters eyelids are part of the facial mesh you should try setting up a circle around the eye like you would a mouth.

Back to Tutorials Main Page