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Micro Expressions

Plugins + Scripts Micro Expressions

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prefectionist

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May 2, 2024
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prefectionist submitted a new resource:

Micro Expressions - An expression animation tool

Micro Expressions

Create expression animations using a bezier editor tool to give your characters a unique personality.


View attachment 498849

(Model: Julia Sanders by @whatsupbrody, hair by @oeshii )

Why this plugin?

While there's many plugins available to randomise expressions, I found them to be a bit robotic, and I felt there was no satisfying way to build unique "personality" into a...

Read more about this resource...
 
Can I bother you with a request? On a 4K Display, the interface appears quite small. Can you make it scalable or maybe implement a toggle to, say, 150% size? In any case, thank you for making one of these must-have plugins!
 
Does this work in VR? Seems I'm only able to see the UI on desktop.
 
First of all, thank you very much for your work, it is so elegant and easy to animate with curves. I would love to be able to add all other control nodes, any chance for an extended version? Would pay for it :)
 
First of all, thank you very much for your work, it is so elegant and easy to animate with curves. I would love to be able to add all other control nodes, any chance for an extended version? Would pay for it :)
Thanks! I think that would be too much for this little editor, timeline is still the best way to animate positions which is why I tried to get them to work together as much as I could.
 
Interesting, i find it soooo much faster with your method. In timeline you would need to go the next frame, select the node, rotate/move it, go to next frame etc., instead of just right clicking for new control points and drag&drop them all in one window.

I just extended it to include the hip as an example, it is so great, i am in love. Guess if i abstract the hardcoded places it would be easy to include the usual nodes. Thanks again for your great work! If you take donations, pls let me know.

hipbezier.jpg
 
oh cool, nice one! Yes I suppose it can be extended to rotate/position any controller or any float storable - I can have a look at that if it's of value. I just think it's a bit limited in its design to ever replace timeline - you would quickly get swamped by the volume of editors (it would require 6 editors per control X/Y/Z rotation and X/Y/Z position!). However, maybe there's a way to make it more manageable (I'm no UI expert haha) - open to ideas, or collab even. Thanks for the feedback btw.
 
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Yeah, timeline is a beast with a lot of functionality. But i don't think an animation plugin have to replace it. It is just great to have another awesome device in the toolbelt with your plugin. I have built modular layers of animations within timeline so far to reuse them, for example only the hip and the chest, but i will use Micro Expressions for that from now on i guess. :) Having storable presets is great in that regard.

You are right with the user interface, that will get crowded fast, hm. I don't know much about creating user interfaces within VaM/Unity yet, but i am intrigued. For the modular approach concentrating only on a few nodes/axes it should be enough for now though.
 
This is sooo well done, absolute A+ for how easy it is to add and edit curves with this! Very appreciative of this streamlined layout vs timeline.
I think there's a bug with the "Scripted" call mode btw, I get an error saying I need to turn the mode on when it's on, so scripted triggers do not work. Not sure if it started after I tried adding two instances of the plugin to the same character, but the bug persists on restarting the game, so likely caused by something else.

Would it be possible to mix the two playback modes btw? Since it's so easy to make complex animations with this, it'd be suuuper useful to be able to play back some animations on demand, while still having the passive ones playing automatically (or fading out when scripted is playing).
If that gets implemented you could also try this for animations driving the same morphs: Look for a matching UID and average the value between the two curves driving the same morph. That would make it possible to play multiple clips at the same time. Though the user would still have to consider different morphs driving similar looks to avoid silly expressions, but would be much easier to handle than to try and juggle timings, I think.

Just some ideas, but really amazing work!
 
Hi @prefectionist

I spent a bit more time with this awesome tool and I gotta repeat the same sentiment as the others. This is great !!

This is actually way more intuitive to animate with, than Timeline (with all due respect to acidbubbles )

This tool is easy to access (Cuz its right in the main UI) and its super easy keyframe, tweak and edit. (And light weight).

I have a follow up question after playing around.

I'm triggering the script via "Play Animation By Name". It runs as expected, but keeps looping.

I might have missed it, but is there a way to have the animation play only once? Until the next trigger?

Thanks again for this awesome (and fun) mini app.
 
This is sooo well done, absolute A+ for how easy it is to add and edit curves with this! Very appreciative of this streamlined layout vs timeline.
I think there's a bug with the "Scripted" call mode btw, I get an error saying I need to turn the mode on when it's on, so scripted triggers do not work. Not sure if it started after I tried adding two instances of the plugin to the same character, but the bug persists on restarting the game, so likely caused by something else.

Would it be possible to mix the two playback modes btw? Since it's so easy to make complex animations with this, it'd be suuuper useful to be able to play back some animations on demand, while still having the passive ones playing automatically (or fading out when scripted is playing).
If that gets implemented you could also try this for animations driving the same morphs: Look for a matching UID and average the value between the two curves driving the same morph. That would make it possible to play multiple clips at the same time. Though the user would still have to consider different morphs driving similar looks to avoid silly expressions, but would be much easier to handle than to try and juggle timings, I think.

Just some ideas, but really amazing work!
Hi sorry for the late reply - that message will come up if it thinks it's in automatic mode instead of scripted (set on the main page), so maybe that's a bug caused by adding it twice (I never tried that). I find that kind of annoying myself I always forget it's in auto mode - it probably should just play regardless of the mode. Have you found that behaviour consistently happens, or only happened when you added two instances?

For the mixed animations, I have a few ideas for mixing animations together, like you have a main expression and can mix in personal ticks or slight variations. Could you give some examples of what you want to do?
 
Hi @prefectionist

I spent a bit more time with this awesome tool and I gotta repeat the same sentiment as the others. This is great !!

This is actually way more intuitive to animate with, than Timeline (with all due respect to acidbubbles )

This tool is easy to access (Cuz its right in the main UI) and its super easy keyframe, tweak and edit. (And light weight).

I have a follow up question after playing around.

I'm triggering the script via "Play Animation By Name". It runs as expected, but keeps looping.

I might have missed it, but is there a way to have the animation play only once? Until the next trigger?

Thanks again for this awesome (and fun) mini app.
Sorry for the delay in replying, if you're in Edit mode, you may have the Loop Animation mode set on (the replay icon) - that would behave the way you described. You can change that to Script mode (the slider icon) and it should just play once as expected.

1753497917223.png

If you're in runtime mode (ie the editor is off) then it should play once when the mode is Script.

1753497932879.png


Note I just fixed a bug in v4 where setting the runtime mode was not properly applied, it also may have been caused by this.

Please try again and let me know if there's further issues
 
To complex for me,couldnt achieve anything. Not for a casual vammer,thats for sure. Also very unintuitive desgin. No offense,thats just personal opinion.
 
To complex for me,couldnt achieve anything. Not for a casual vammer,thats for sure. Also very unintuitive desgin. No offense,thats just personal opinion.
No, this is not for casual users, it's more of a creator tool. There's plenty of great plugins that give you plug and play experience like Body Language and others.
 
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