Another Day Another Driver

Thats right, more set driven keys. I spent today adding 'stuff' to the facial control box in an attempt to make life easier for us animators. Clusters were attached to the eyebrow vertices, which in turn were parented to floating circles postioned in front of the face. This created a far more flexible and efficent way of controlling the brow expressions.

Next I created a control similar to the open, clsoe, wide, and narrow, but for the tongue. Instead I combined the up, down, left and right bend deformers of the tongue to achieve a really nice monouverable tongue control. It is now able to slap all over the place, as well as tuck in and out depending on the positon of a new slider. I have yet to figure out a set up for the ripple (wave deformer) however I think we should just animate it from the channel box - much easier.

Finally I knocked up a quick animation test before heading off for work. It's only a basic wake up, but it was nice to be able to animate the blends easily for once. Luckily the test proved there were no serious issues with the setup, apart from needing a rig to parent the eyes to.....