Chapter 5. Character Setup for Animating the Face

This chapter shows you how to create animation controls for the face. Because the face is the most expressive and complex area on your character's body, it requires finer controls than other body parts. Some of the techniques shown in this chapter involve creating additional influences in the face area, and are an extension of what you learned in Chapter 4, "Deforming the Skin." Other techniques such as creating morph targets, called blend shapes, are introduced as a way of enhancing skeletal deformations. In the advanced section of this chapter, both influences and blend shapes are used to create several levels of controls that mimic the muscles of the face. Before beginning this process, however, it is a good idea to separate your character's head skin from the rest of the body at the neck, so you can add all the face influences only to the head skin, and you only have to duplicate the head skin to create blend shape targets. Otherwise, your blend shapes would include other body parts, such as the neck and torso, which would not be very efficient. If using NURBS surfaces, do this by selecting an isoparm at the top of the neck, and detach it from the head. Or if using a single-surface polygon skin, separate the head from the neck along an edge at the top of the neck. Try to choose an edge to separate that is not directly on a joint to ensure a minimum amount of deformation on the resulting seam.