Note on blendshapes: don't stop where it's anatomically done-animators will need more, oftentimes. You still have to sculpt your facial blendshapes to make them look great, but the underlying structure of nodes and connections is all done automatically - huge time saver. In fact, IM made some of the first muscle-based facial rigs to break the uncanny valley, but in normal production they are still not feasible. Muscle rigs are 'sweet' and 'impressive', but if you need speed, no muscle. If you try setting up a facial rig exclusively from Maya Muscle (and FACS system), your animators will Kill you, because rig is so slow.

As a bonus, add children joints to thin & thicken the lip Make sure that your face can do narrow and wide properlyĪdd an attribute (specific blendshapes) for brow squeezeĪt lease three ctrls for the lip. The eyes (and brows, eyelids and upper cheeks) are the window to the soul, as it were, and if you spend a lot of time on the mouth area and not enough on the upper face, people will focus too much on that area and you risk falling into uncanny valley. How is this done in a way to avoid cycle errors? Jay suggests checking the Image Metrics forums.Īnother big point is: don't neglect the upper face in your rig. The IM system uses a 'hybrid' blendshape/joint setup where the joints follow the blendshapes using custom constraints.

These are awesome lectures- see especially Part 2, 00: 46: 'If your facial rig can't do this, then it sucks!'Įxplores the Balance of making a 'perfect' facial rig with limited control that animators cannot mess up, and an anatomically accurate facial rig with 1000 controls that can be 'broken' by an inexperienced animator. Hippydrome has finally added the face!! What more can I say?įacial Rigging: Balancing Quality and Control (Image Metrics' Jay Grenier)

Rigging a face in maya