A couple questions regarding character rigging and blend shapes.

#1

I’m currently going through the workflow of my first character in Maya, and have gotten to the point of rigging. I originally intended on creating the entire rig by using bones, but recently learned about blend shapes and am considering using a blend shape setup for the face. Therefore, I have a couple questions about implementing this.

  1. Can I use a skeleton to rig the body and use blend shapes to deform the face simultaneously?
  2. I have a separate group of eyelash surfaces that would need to move along with the eyelids. What would you recommend as a solution for this?
  3. If I’m using a dozen or so blend shapes for the face, how should I manage the target objects? Is there a better solution than simply having a layer with ten or so target models?

Also feel free to tell me how you prefer to rig characters; I’m interested in learning.

#2

  1. You can rig the entire body including the head and face AND use blend shapes on top of that to get the facial expressions you want.

  2. You could rig the eyelashes to the eyelids so that they move together.

  3. Look up Set Driven Keys or SDK’s. You can create attributes on your head controller that would control the influence of the blend shapes to the rigged model. I usually just duplicate the geo over to the side and create and apply my blendshape. There is probably a tutorial or two for this workflow floating around the internet. I may be wrong but you can either delete the blend shape objects after you have made them or just duplicate the head and create the blendshape off of it. If your mesh isnt dense it may not be a problem.

#3

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.