Universal Sonic Mouth Tutorial - Trailer

In case you've ever wondered how I got HD Heroes Sonic's mouth to move from side to side without separate meshes, now you'll know.

This probably isn't the walkthrough-type tutorial you were hoping for, so my apologies. I'm giving this tutorial another place to exist, just in-case ppl needed to see it again. That's all.
(also hello after nine months)

Additional Credits:
@InfiniteDXI - Marza's Universal Sonic Mouth documentation/translation
@sheepdogful - Showcase mouth expressions

Music: Sonic Heroes - Unexpected Encounter

[KamauKianjahe]

The Blender Artists thread in the description also contains their feedback and further developments if interested.

[edsoncastillo]

Metal Sonic: “I don’t have such weaknesses.”

[jessiebell]

The movement of the eyebrows doesn't get enough love.

[Delgas]

As a beginner in blender, I can confirm that I didn't understand a thing, but I like what I'm seeing

[isaacfields]

This is a really clever solution!
I’m going to have to replace the mouths of all my custom rigs now.
I know you may not have the time but I would love to see what the solution is for whiskers (like Tails, Big, Fang, Bark, and Infinite)

[AllExistence]

I've been searching for this solution for so long.
I've actually come up with this myself in a bit of a different way.

[geforcescripts]

Honestly this could be better than the side mouth if sonic team doesn't make it look wierd

[ebettoran]

bruh


this is great thankyou for making this AND showing how it works

[MaximilianonMars]

This is very cool. It's the first vid I've come across showing a method for the mouth movement I have in mind. It's this kind of hybrid between 2D animation and 3D the way it looks, like how recent Pixar movies are doing mouths.

[beemerwalker]

*Subscribes* look forward to seeing your work and learning from this.

[Tawbay-crbw]

Thank you for teaching me how to use sonic’s mouth! 👅

[The_Xcalibur]

Can we just talk about the fact that Sonic's mouth actually changes its place on his muzzle?

[fabionoronhazampieri]

In conclusion is a muzzle that can move son you can place the mouth in every side(middle mouth or side mouth?

[vinuldash]

i wonder if duplication of subdivision and shrinkwrap is a glitch or a feature, i'm just afraid blender devs will fix it one day with ruin this gorgeous rig

[danielwilson]

i have SO many projects i want to use this on....

[SarpSerter]

Hello, Great video!

I am trying to recreate this in autodesk maya and I struggle to find even what words to use to search for the process. Any ideas?

[isaacfields]

So, I was racking my brain to figure out the best solution for sonic eyes
I have nothing against textured eyes (so don’t get angry Kamau) I just wanted three dimensional eyes
So I was in bed tossing and turning and then I went “Eureka!” Just recycle the techniques from this mouth rig but for the eyes.
This will be long but I thought I might as well share my discovery with my fellow artists on the interwebs. And if I was to share it, I might as well do it here.

-Create a curved plane surface (this will act as the Shrinkwrap target)
-Make a sphere in edit mode rotate it 90 on the X-axis and resize it to fit the aspect ratio of a Sonic eye
-Place the sphere accordingly and split the front and back halves into separate objects (the front half will be the sclera and the back half will be the iris and pupil)
(Inner Eye) (Remember to use mirror modifiers)
-Select the innermost rings and flatten them to make the pupil
-Exrude geometry on the x and z-axis (and some add loopcuts) for the whites of the eyes (and for mono eye characters add some geometry in between)
-Add a Subdivision Surface then Shrinkwrap to the target mesh, make a inverted vertex group for the iris. ‘the whites’ will conform to the desired shape while keeping the iris intact (add a second Subdivide and Shrinkwrap to fix artifacts)
(Outer Eye)
-Duplicate and separate the ‘whites’ geometry from the inner eye object and join it to the outer eye object and stitch it to the sclera
-Add a Subdivision Surface then Shrinkwrap to the target mesh, make a inverted vertex group for the Sclara. Make sure in the Shrinkwrap settings you are using Above Surface and set the Offset value on the last Shrinkwrap modifier so the outer eye appears above the inner eye
(Rig) (obviously I’ve simplified the explanation a bit)
-Weight paint the Sclera and Iris to a bone so the up and down movement is working. On the Eye bone use a Shrinkwrap constraint, in the info box put in the Shrinkwrap target mesh and use Align to Normal
-You will need a second deformation bone to correct for side to side movement. For this group paint the areas directly beneath and above the eyes. I recommend placing these secondary bones in the center of the head pointing towards each eye and use the Locked Track constraint on the Z-Axis so they follow the side to side movement of each eye
-For each eye you can make another bone for the scaling the pupils
-Make two overlapping bones in the center of the head and parent an eye to each (these will be used as the rotation axis for each eye)
-Make another overlapping set of bones directly in front of the previous two bones. These will be Damped Track Targets for the rotation axis bones
-Make a bone and parent the two damped track target bones to it (This will act as the Eye Master Controler while the two damped track targets can be used for tweaking the positions of each eye individually)
(Textures)
-Figure it out on your own!

…Seriously I’m sure you can find a tutorial yourself it’s not that hard…


Hope someone will find this useful. Maybe I’ll make a video tutorial on this someday who knows… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Have a Day!

[ZachDough]

Hi, how did you do the thing where you could select the Mouth options like Mouth K? And how do you get it up?

[kelroli]

Hi, i`d really appreciate some help. I`m following your tutorial and when I touch anything, the muzzle mesh rotates and deforms and the mouth position bone rotates too pointing in all directions. I downloaded your blender exemple file and compared it to mine, and I can`t see what i`m doing wrong, I feel like it could be something simple I`m just not seeing, but I`ve been trying for weeks with no luck. Thank you either way, you`re so good at this, amazing animation

[geezerton]

Thank you thats so cool that will make that easy (i dont know any model of sonic that can do that and i looked for one in sfm but no)