Universal Human Face Rig

IMPORTANT:  Please read the product description carefully, and check the License Agreement before purchasing.  Owners of both the Face Rig and the Body Rig qualify for a free upgrade to the ready assembled Body & Face Rig (see details* below).  Competence using Blender is recommended to fully benefit from this product.

Used independently or as a facial upgrade for the Body Rig*, this rigged base mesh is the successor to the Ed, Face Test and Eye Piece videos, and forms the basis of the Flexpressions video.  With controls for easily customising and even animating skeletal proportions, it provides a flexible, human-shaped canvas for sculpting, texturing, posing and animating myriad expressive humans, humanoid creatures and stylised characters.  All the painstaking rigging, weight painting, retopologising, shape key shaping and UV unwrapping has been taken care of for you, so you can skip straight to the fun stuff.

Uses include:

• A basis for sculpting and texturing new characters
• Posing for art reference and paint-overs
• Animating
• Instructional presentations
• Pulling it apart to see what makes it tick

Race and Gender shapes are available separately, and can be mixed as per this early proof of concept:

MAIN FEATURES

• Designed to accommodate realistic character creation and animation
• Gender neutral base mesh, head averaged from 18 male, female, African, Asian and European likenesses of models and celebrities.  Both genders can be enabled by appending one of the Male or Female head base meshes that are sold separately. Note: only the male OR the female is required - there is no need to purchase both.
• Face shapes based on muscle groupings (similar to FACS), with non-linear transitions for fluid, organic motion and discrete facial control
• On-the-fly customisable rig proportions; easily and non-destructively edit the size, position and orientation of the eyes, teeth, tongue, jaw, head, neck and shoulders
• Age control for dialling in infant-to-adult skeletal proportions (only the armature is transformed; add the Child Head Base Mesh for the complete transformation).
• Includes upper torso rig
• Includes rigged eyeballs, teeth (with age/baby teeth shape key) and tongue meshes
• Unwrapped to 6 UDIMs, ready for texturing
• Dynamic wrinkles node group** (wrinkle maps can be purchased separately as part of the Head Textures, or created from scratch using the instructions here)
• Lightweight mesh for responsive performance; poly count (before subdivision): head: 1658 faces (quads); eyeballs: 422 faces (quads) each, teeth & tongue: 1,768 faces (quads)
• Topology optimised for animation and posing; edge loops follow wrinkles and muscular direction where possible, without compromising deformation quality
• All quads
• Template image outlining UV islands and features, to assist with texture and hair placement
• Compatible with Blender 4.2 and higher
• No script installations or add-ons necessary; just load and go!

Visit this page for full feature list and operational instructions.

LIMITATIONS

• Certain face shape combinations may produce undesirable results, especially when combined with more unusual proportions.  These can be countered by editing the shape keys directly, or adding corrective shape keys.
  

LICENSE AGREEMENT

By purchasing or using this product, you agree to be bound by the conditions in the License Agreement.

For Frequently Asked Questions, documentation and more, visit the Universal Human website.

*For a complete human rig, see the Body & Face Rig.  *Owners of the Face Rig and Body Rig are eligible for a free upgrade, provided they both appear in the same Gumroad account.  To request an upgrade, contact me with the name or email address associated with the account.  The download link has to be manually emailed after verification, so please allow a day or so for it to arrive (if it doesn't, check your spam folder).

**Wrinkles nodes may be transplanted to the Skin Shader in future, if and when a suitable tension-based alternative becomes available.