Jason Williams

My Machinima team really specialized and different team members worked on different things.  I was a FacePoser man.  So I only really learned "extra" things about that aspect.  Without further ado, here's a few things I learned during the course of the semester in Machinima that might be useful for future students:

1. With respect to Flex Animations, a subtle look that might not even be noticed in the final production is still better than a dorky grin/jaw drop ect.

	-Details:  Though you may be tempted to move slider bars all the way up when doing Flexes, I don't recommend it.  I've found that, at least in this environment, it is REALLY easy to make a character look silly and difficult to make them look realistic.  Small facial changes is the key in my opinion--especially focus on the eyebrows.  Do as little as possible with the lips and try to never drop the jaw.  Especially because it messes with any dialog, but even without that when does somebody ACTUALLY drop their jaw?  Seriously...it looks really bad.

2. Lots of Gestures, however, are good.

	-Details:  People don't just leave their hands at their sides as they talk.  Most people are very animated.  Getting a good mix of gestures can go a long way towards adding realism, although you still have to be careful.  Many characters don't have very many different gestures and they can look really "samey" if the same gesture is used multiple times within a single film.

3. Looking around...pain in the butt

	-Details:  Characters' default idle causes them to do quite a lot of random looking around and, in my opinion, it looks terrible.  You can try to overcome it by having them look at other characters.  This becomes a problem if they only stare at one character, making them look really static, or if you have them look at multiple characters they often turn their heads WAY to fast.  I didn't really find a good solution to this unfortunately.  Naming other props/etc in the scene is one way to handle it.  You can have them look at those props.

4. Triggers

	-Details:  If someone else is doing the blocking and Hammer stuff, have them do things that they want to happen mid-scene via a faceposer trigger so that you can easily place the action RIGHT after or before the crucial piece of dialog.  This is much easier and more easily modifiable/flexible than just trying to time things out correctly from within hammer.

5. If you use the Monk model...PUT HIM IN A LINE_IDLE

	-Details:  Unless you want your actor to be holding an amazing invisible shotgun, create a Choreo-Scene which runs throughout your entire scene and in that choreo just have Monk holding one of the LINE_IDLE gestures (He's got three--two normal standing and one with his arms folded).  These gestures aren't great gestures, but they are much better than that stupid invisible shotgun of his...(alternatively, he could lean against a wall, etc.  I've just found LINE_IDLE to be the most "normal").

6. When the phoneme editor doesn't pick up Phonemes just do your best without wasting too much effort

	-Details:  The most frustrating thing about FacePoser is trying to phoneme something by hand.  Don't let yourself get down.  It'll ruin a whole evening of working on the project if one long wav makes you insert phonemes for the whole thing.  A lot of the phoneme stuff isn't perfect anyways so my advice is settle for imperfection.  Sorry, that's probably terrible advice, but there it is.  Don't go crazy on something that probably won't be on camera in the final cut anyways.

7. If using long gestures/flex animations, don't try dragging them out with the mouse.  Modify them to set the start and end times to the times you want.  It's much faster.

	-Details:  Self explanatory

8. Scene_flush from Half Life 2 is your friend.

	-Details:  If you change a scene, no need to recompile the map or even restart HL2.  Just reload the map and type scene_flush into the console and it should load in the modified scene file.

9. Have fun, split things up, don't stress it.  Faceposer is one of those things that drives perfectionists CRAZY.  Just keep things subtle and natural.  Act them out as the actors do if you need to.  If it feels unnatural to make that face, or you lips don't move that way when you say that line, or you would never move your hands in that manner in that circumstance, TAKE IT OUT.  It'll make your movie look a LOT better.  Don't go overboard trying to show off what you can make the character do if it's not natural.  That's about the extent of my advice.  Good luck with your movies!