Facial Setup

Finally managed to get somewhere today! With the much appreciated help of Alex Hulse and Dave I began to understand what set driven keys, locators, blendshape sets and limitations actually are. I had made the big mistake of creating all my blendshapes seperately, meaning I had about 20 individual blends. Really I should have been creating sets of blends which when combined would form inbetween expressions, such as open, closed, wide and narrow.

So the first task was to delete all existing blends and reassign them in multiples according to the expression. Once all the sets were created I set up a simple slider control with the help of Alex. He explained the process envolved:

- Create blendshape set
- Create curve control
- Merge curves
- Name
- Freeze transformations
- Create curve slider
- Merge curves
- Name
- Freeze Transformations
- Parent slider curve to control curve
- Set limitations of slider.
- Lock off x and z, and set min and max of y by reffering to channelbox.
- Animate - Set driven key - Set
- Select slider - Load driver
- Select translate Y
- Select Blendshape set in channel box - Load Driven
- Select specific blend
- Key (with slider at 0, and blend at 0)
- Translate slider to max Y value, and blendshape to 1
- Key
- Depending on whether you require multiple blendshapes, repeat the process.

I soon grasped the conecpt and began to enjoy creating all the controls. Using the same technique I applied quiver controls to premade clusters. As well as this I made a four way control for the open, closed, wide and narrow by merging 4 blendshapes and the X and Y translations of a locator in a box. Finally I added a high and low bound slider for the mouth to position the mouth wherever we want on the curvature of the face.



Although far from finished with blendshapes still to create I am really pleased with progress made today. I learnt a hell of a lot and I owe a big thanks to Alex and Dave for their time.. I think I now know how to sort out the eyes, eyebrows, eye lids, teeth and tongue....

Heres a quick playblast of the controls so far in action.....