Facial Rigging Including Eyebrows

I followed through the tutorial I found earlier today and must say I really enjoyed rigging. The head model also provided a good base for me to start with and I am sure over the next week I can create a fully functioning face, which is what I aim to do and then maybe create a lip sync animation by January to show the expressions and mouth shapes working in a context. I have learned more about painting weights to clusters, although I did move through it quickly from my past tutorials I have followed.

I had not previously rigged the eyebrows before, and I know this is only basic but I was interested to find you can do it in the same manner with the clusters on the face. Just got to work out how to scrunch them and raise certain sides as I know this will be time consuming to get many different poses.

Rigging Test from Hayley Allen on Vimeo.

Research

I realise I have not put many tests on here over the last few weeks, as I have been concentrating more on my animation, and also I have been doing a lot of background reading.

I have just found a really good tutorial on the Autodesk website that I will definitely be completing over the next few days. It helps because it also included an unrigged head that I can use, as it is difficult finding decent ones for free.



However the bulk of my learning has been from this book 'Stop Staring' where I have been learning about all the background information of where is influenced in the face by the lower eyelids and the shapes I should utilise to make certain visimes etc. I am just getting to the point where the tutorials begin, so again I will have a practical week or so before Christmas using this.



I think that by taking time to read and understand the build up of the face I will be able to create better blendshapes, so combining these two sources should give me great results.

Locator Test

Youtube Facial Rigging

Maya 2011 New Features - Weights and Binding Skin