stretchy head setup

#1

Hey all,
I am rigging a cartoon-like character (think SpongeBob),and I was wondering how to combine a squash and stretch setup on a head with blendshapes and facial controls. I have a regular stretchy setup on the head (arc length node going into MultDiv, then into scaleX of joints) and basic controls on the face. The character’s eyebrows, eyes, eyelid and mouth are all separate pieces of geometry. The problem I am having is getting the separate pieces of facial geometry to stretch with the rest of the head. Should all the geometry be in one skin cluster? I am using Maya. Any help is appreciated.

#2

Hey!

What people usually do to achieve nice squash and stretch deformations is use lattices.
You can select all the vertices and curve points that will be affected by the lattice (even from separate geometries) and they all will squash/stretch as you wish.
Then you just have to choose a way to drive the deformation.
One option would be clusters that will drive the points from the lattice. Another one would be to “model” the lattices manually and have your controls drive the envelope from these clusters (or maybe activate a lattice blendshape)… I like this way cause you can control exactly how the deformation will look like, but the downside is there it won’t go any further than this preset deformation.
You could also use the bend and squash nodes, apply them to the lattices and have the controls drive their curvatures/factor.

Hope that helps

#3

Hey,
Thanx for the helpful reply. I figured lattices would be the way to go. I’m gonna do a few experiments with the lattices and see what happens. Thanx again.