---
title: '[Live2D Tutorial] 180°(90°) head turn rigging'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=-mLVKeRwuZk'
video_id: '-mLVKeRwuZk'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1100
---

# [Live2D Tutorial] 180°(90°) head turn rigging

> Source: [(Live2D Tutorial) 180°(90°) head turn rigging](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-mLVKeRwuZk)

## Summary

This tutorial demonstrates how to rig a 180° (or 90°) head turn for a Live2D VTuber model. The creator shares their personal workflow, including layer preparation, deformer hierarchy, key framing, and corner synthesis, while noting that 45° is sufficient for streaming but a full side profile adds polish.

### Key Points

- **Tutorial Scope** [00:00] — The tutorial covers rigging a 180° head turn, though 45° is sufficient for streaming. The creator notes this is a niche feature that can command over $400.
- **Prerequisites** [00:44] — Viewers should follow the beginner series for head XY deformer hierarchy. This is not a beginner tutorial.
- **Layer Preparation** [01:07] — Create a side profile sketch for reference. Include nose line, nose base, side profile underfills, and lip underfills.
- **Importing and Aligning** [01:31] — Import the PSD into Live2D, delete background, recolor sketch for visibility, and align with the model.
- **Expanding Angle X** [02:26] — Edit the angle X parameter to min/max 60. Select all attached items, add three key points, and slide to the left to start rigging the side profile.
- **Deforming Head XY** [03:00] — Deform head XY to match the side profile. Nose XY is separate, so deform it individually. Hide nose mask by lowering opacity in multiple key editing.
- **Deforming Eyes and Eyebrows** [04:08] — Deform eyes XY and eyebrows XY to match the side profile. Anything attached to angle XY can be deformed directly.
- **Mouth Side Deformer Issue** [04:39] — Creating a mouth side deformer inside head XY causes weird stretching due to parent squish. Solution: drag it outside head XY.
- **Fixing Hair Overlap** [05:40] — Use invert mask of side nose on hair. For longer hair, adjust draw order. Separate left/right hair and copy a thick portion to cover gaps.
- **Horizontal Reflection** [07:04] — Once one side is done, horizontally reflect by selecting everything attached to angle X (except asymmetrical like pupils) and using reflect function.
- **Synthesizing Corners** [08:52] — After both sides are done, synthesize corners. Make nose invisible temporarily. Use a blend shape parameter 'Corners' to copy tilting motions from angle Y to side profiles.
- **Manual Adjustments with Deform Brush** [10:50] — After synthesis, use deform brush instead of green dots to avoid bugs. Fix folding by selecting non-folding parts and using shift copy-paste.
- **Fixing Mouth Open Bug** [11:54] — Mouth open at side profile causes lower lip folding. Move deformer dots lower to fix.
- **Nose and Mouth Side Outside Head XY** [12:33] — Drag nose and mouth side outside head XY to avoid spherical distortion. Add missing parameters and resynthesize corners for nose.
- **Adjusting Mouth Open** [13:18] — Attach two key frames to mouth open on lower lip and underfill, drag down when mouth opens. Also deform inner mouth XY.
- **V Bridger Parameters** [13:50] — If using V Bridger, consider parameters like mouth X, mouth shrug, cheek puff, jaw open for nose and side mouth.
- **Hair at Four Corners** [14:20] — After corner synthesis, drag hair outside head XY for easier adjustment with deform brush.
- **Emotes with Side Profile** [15:21] — Create a deformer for emotes, attach to all X and Y key points, drag outside head XY, shift copy-paste to avoid folding, then reflect and synthesize corners only for emotes.
- **Ear Layering Fix** [16:16] — Move ears behind face but in front of hair layer. Inverse clip ears to hair. Indent skull to fix bald spot.
- **Final Detail Fixing** [16:43] — Add a key point near -60 (e.g., -50) for common resting position. Adjust cheeks and nose. Each key point on angle X adds two on angle Y.
- **Export and Tracking Fix** [17:14] — Invert angle Y and angle Z at side profile for correct nodding. Use V Bridger functions (hamster crumbs) for accurate tracking, or skip if not needed.
- **Final Adjustments** [17:51] — Adjust range of face left/right rotation (angle X) and body X. Expect bugs and iterate.

### Conclusion

Rigging a 180° head turn in Live2D is a complex but rewarding process that involves meticulous deformer hierarchy, key framing, and corner synthesis. Expect to find and fix many bugs, but the result adds significant polish to a VTuber model.

## Transcript

guys I have a tutorial for the new life
2D meta 180° head turn Okay joking to be
honest a 45° angle is sufficient for
streaming but just in case you don't
want your model to be stuck perpetually
on this angle and you want your viewers
to go wo your model can turn to the side
then I got a tutorial for
you 180° is more of a flex than actually
being practical or if you're bigger it
could be an addition to your commission
price list obviously charge where you're
comfortable with charging but once you
master this you can easily charge over
400 USD for this fature you know just a
starting price recommendation since it's
pretty Niche okay so for this tutorial
I'm going to expand on poooo you may
need to follow my beginner series at
least the head x white part to
understand my deformer hierarchy and I
would not classify this as a beginner
tutorial because it's kind of difficult
bro also this tutorial is my own process
I haven't watched other tutorials but if
you have better methods let me
know so first the layer preparation I
made this side profile sketch for
reference definitely recommend it if
it's your first time and I also have the
nose line and nose base that I'm going
to turn into the side nose and last I
have the entire side profile as
underfill as well as upper lip and lower
lip and their coding underfills you
could get away without this folder like
my model didn't have it but just for
consistency sake so now we can go ahead
and import the PSD onto my poooo
model and delete the background and I'm
just recoloring my sketch so that it's
more visible then adjust my imported
file to align with the
model some standard
meshing more
centering then put the layers in their
recording folders and deformers nose
line and nose base goes in nose and
previously already have a nose line so I
don't really need the new one I just
delete that also put the nose base in
nose XY then put all the under fills in
one folder and put it under the
face and the mouth side just over the
face
base okay now I'm going to expand angle
X so edit the parameter and turn the
maximum and minimum to 60 and
60 then right click on the parameter
select to select everything attached to
the parameter then add three key points
to cover up the maximum and minimum
slide all the way to the left and we're
going to start rigging this side profile
just adjusting my reference a bit more I
forgot how you make a guide image out of
a layer instead of reimporting the whole
PS
so I'm just locking it and I start
deforming on my head XY this is the most
trust the process thing I have to do in
my whole rigging career and also because
my nose XY is not inside of head XY so I
have to individually deform that so I
realized my nose mask is popping out but
that didn't need to be seen so I lowered
the opacity to zero and after adding key
points and deforming my nose base I
realized that my nose mask is only
invisible at that one key point so I
went into multiple Keys editing and
lowered the opacity in there so that it
applies to all my key forms so as you
can see there are a lot of things you
have to fix to hide the face line I just
inverse clipped it to my side
mouth so I tried to do most of the
rigging on head XY just because after
four corner synthesizing I can do all
the four corner adjustments on head XY
and keeping it minimal on all the other
deformers okay and I finally had enough
of him staring to my soul so I'm just
going to deform eyes XY and also
eyebrows
XY so basically anything that was
attached to angle XY beforehand I can
just directly deform at the side profile
too and that includes my Iris XY
so continue adjusting anything that you
think needs
adjustments for the mouth side I created
a deformer and I put that in head XY and
I gave it key points but I soon realized
that it's doing this really weird effect
when it's in head XY when you're
adjusting things inside of head XY the
things that are close to the squished
border basically um they're going to do
this weird effect where they're going to
stretch and then come back
and that's because the children of the
squished parent deformer is moving and
it's like following that squished
movement that the parent deformer had so
for the mouth side I just drag it
outside of head XY and it's good but for
the minor stuff like the hair we can
leave it inside of head X Y because when
we synthesize Corners we'll need to put
everything back in head X Y again and
then synthesize and only afterwards we
can drag it outside so it fixes the
weird warping motion so all this to say
as long as a child object is attached to
the same parameters as its parents it
doesn't matter if it's inside the parent
anymore okay and just continue rigging
until your model matches your reference
picture and to fix you know the hair
overlapping your nose I'm basically just
putting an invert mask of my side nose
onto my hair also put the underfill as a
mask
too this solution is good for short hair
but if it's longer hair you might want
to play with the draw order like in this
example later on I'm going to use this
piece of hair to cover up that Gap but
first I have to separate my left hair to
right hair so I just copied it and
erased half for one and then erase the
other half for the
other and when I turn to the right I'm
going to lower the draw order just by
one if you have other hair that's on the
back that's over lapping you can lower
those by two now I'm going to choose a
portion of the hair when it's still
pretty thick shift control C and then
shift control V at the side profile so
that it stays thick and covers up
whatever I need to cover and just you
know fix all the minor things you need
to fix attention to detail you know side
profile is not a hard concept to do but
there's just so much fixing in all the
details that it's pretty time consuming
I would say okay so back to when we only
had one side profile we are going to
horizontally flip it once you're done so
right click on angle X select everything
uh deselect the ones that are not
symmetrical like pupil XY but it's okay
if you miss them because we can always
fix it later so horizontally reflect I
definitely missed the
ears so to fix the weird reflected stuff
you can go to x at 30 shift control C
then go back to 60 and shift control
V and as for this side mouth you can
just flip it yourself or I reflected it
control shift C undo and then control
shift
V e
and when you are done with your two side
profiles it is now time to synthesize
Corners so right click on angle X again
select everything synthesize
corners and um it's going to look
something like this okay my nose is
having some problems but it's okay don't
worry about that for now actually I
recommend making the nose invisible and
we're going to come back to those later
and we are now going to adjust the Four
Corners the scariest part so I kind of
came up with this trick so make a new
parameter call it Corners check blend
shape on head XY add three key points go
to angle X at -30 and angle Y at 30
control shift C and then go to Corners
at 30 control shift V so because blend
shapes will register movements
regardless of other parameter key points
as long as I register this tilting
motion I can go to the side profile and
apply that tilting motion here okay but
we're going to do the same for angle Y
at -30 so shift copy it and paste it on
Corners at -30 so it's going to look a
bit something like this obviously the
nose is messed up but it's okay we're
going to fix the nose later so I just
made the nose visible and now I'm going
to use the blend shape to like choose a
point in the model where I feel like it
fits the tilting at the side profile crl
shift C and go back to angle X at -60 Y
at 30 Corners at zero and control shift
v um play around with the head to see if
the motion is smooth um and I feel like
I could use a bit more tilting so I just
used my Corner blend shape again and
then shift copy paste it so the same
thing with angle Y at -30 um this time
the corners is at -30 and I choose a
point and shift copy paste
it so now the general tilting motion is
done I'm going to start manually
adjusting things but you're going to
notice that life 2D does not like your
deformers overlapping and when you use
the green dots it's going to have this
weird bug so we cannot use the green
dots now we're going to use deform
brush okay but before this folded face
Shadow is bugging me very much and
that's because of how head XY is just
folding upon itself so I'm going to fix
this by selecting the folding part find
a spot where it's not folding upon
itself control shift C and control shift
V so do the same for the upward tilting
I find that the hair is
folding too much upon itself over here
so I just select it a part of the face
and shift copy paste it you can probably
tell by now that this is my favorite
function to use in live 2D and the free
version does not have this function so
make use of the free trial please and
now I finally remember to check how the
mouth open looks at the side profile and
I realized that there's this bug thingy
and it's because of of the lower lip
folding upon itself you really need to
find the root of these problems and for
me I think it's because these dots are
too close when the mouth opens so I just
need to move it lower
okay now I'm going to make my nose and
mouth side visible um they look
atrocious um because they're inside of
head XY and following head xy's
spherical motion which does not fit the
nose so we're going to drag that outside
and resynthesize corners only for the
nose and here I realized I haven't added
all the parameters from outside so I'm
going to go ahead and add angle y so
that it will inherit the angle y from
nose XY
and so now I can drag it
outside so at this point this is my
hierarchy now I can start manually
adjusting the nose along with the face
you know everything else later
on I'm going to skip ahead a little bit
to adjust the mouth the way I have it
set up it's pretty straightforward just
attach two key frames to mouth open on
the lower lip and its underfill and just
drag it down when the mouth
opens and my epis also had some movement
so I just mve that
too and I forgot to do this here but you
should also probably deform the inner
mouth XY bit
more if you have V Bridger you have to
consider the V Bridger parameters too a
mouth X mouth shrug cheek puff and jaw
open probably need the nose and the side
mouth to also be attached to it and do
some
movements now we need to adjust the hair
at the Four Corners you're going to
notice a bit difficulty when you're
trying to adjust the hair while it's
still inside of head XY and we only
needed it inside of head XY to synthesiz
Corners now that's done we can drag it
outside of head
XY and just continue deforming with the
brush
so when I'm riging the ears I also drag
that outside of head
XY so we're almost done at this point
you're going to notice that the emotes
are not working well with the side
profile so what I do is that I make a
deformer on top the
emotes and let's pretend there are other
emotes inside this deformer like scared
and stuff so I'm going to attach it to
all my X and Y key points drag that
outside of head XY shift copy paste a
point where it's not folding as much
like it's going to come off the face a
little bit but it's okay in my opinion
it's just a minor little thing it's
better than it folding upon itself yeah
so I reflect the motion and I drag the
Emos for back in head XY to synthesized
corners only for the emotes do not ever
touch the head XY synthesized Corners
ever again and when that's done I can
drag my emotes outside of head
XY so another thing I found out while
testing is that my ears will go through
the face um because it's layered in
front of the face so I'm going to move
it to the back of the face um but I also
want it in front of that layer of hair
so I'm just just going to inverse clip
my ears to that
hair but then his balding head is string
through so I just indented his skull
yeah that's a fix so one last little
detail fixing you can do is you can add
a key point to somewhere really close to
- 60 like 50 because I find that while
tracking your face rests at around this
key Point fairly often so you will want
it to look perfect like make the cheeks
puffier and pay more attention to the
nose but do remember that each key point
you add on angle X um there's two more
on angle y you have to rig so let's say
you are finally ready to export while
put all the textures in the textures
Atlas you would want to invert the angle
Y and angle Zed at side profile because
you'll notice when you nod there that's
still tracking angle y but angle y side
profile is tilting instead of doing it
in live 2D I have been told a much
easier way which is to do it with v
Bridger functions I followed the amazing
hamster crumbs functions and it saves my
Life Link in the description just if you
want more accurate side profile tracking
but honestly if you don't want to pay
for custom V Bridger you can get away
without this and finally the last thing
to do is to adjust the range of face
Left Right rotation which is angle X and
also B body X and you are done
congratulations okay actually you're
probably going to find more bugs when
you're testing uh and you're going to go
back to Lefty and fix it like I probably
forgot things too and it's not super
polished like some hair is kind of bad
looking but it's okay good luck guys