#RiggingInMaya | Part 14 | Intermediate | Face Rig - Blend Shapes

hello and welcome to video 14 in my rigging in Maya series in the previous video we looked at building a joint based facial rig complete with all the controls needed to animate it what we're going to do now is take a step back and rebuild the face rig but instead of using joints we will be using blend shapes rather than just focus on the shape editor I also want to investigate some other options which could help speed up your shape creation in addition to this I also want to share a technique I regularly use to help divide an area like the lips but intersections but this is also a future-proof if the base mesh changes so in effect you will be building a blend shape generator now before we dive in I just wanted to mention that you can now download all the source files for each parts of this ringing in my series from my cube brush page you can find a link in the description below while you're there why don't you grab some of the other tutorials models or rigs I have an offer most are free but if you would like to help contribute to these videos all donations are welcome alternatively if you enjoy these videos why not simply treat me to a coffee as a way of saying thank you just head to coffee calm /and cgi supporters now get exclusive rewards and early access to videos not to mention a private invitation to my very own discard channel right let's dive in so here we have the model in the same state as it was before we start at the joint based facial rig but with a few minor changes we still have the joints driving the eyes and the eyelids to be honest I think this is always the best way to animate a spherical object blend shapes are linear meaning the vertices move from one point to another in a straight line so they don't work well on an eyeball I also have the controls which we created in the previous videos here too I don't see the point in going over these again so if you want to see how they were created please refer back to video 12 I might change these slightly too depending on what shapes we end up with just like the eyes I'm keeping the jaw joint driven to again this just gives us much more flexibility in this area and we can achieve some nice natural movement the idea is to use these controls to manipulate the blend shapes in these areas so here for example moving this would puff out his cheek this control could move this area of the lake creating a nice curve the same with this one so we could edit them individually are all at the same time to create multiple mouth shapes thinking about it I might add an extra control in the corner here with this one we can pull the mouth around to make it wider moving up to farm a smile and down to make him frown okay let's hide those again one of the change I've made is to separate the head from the body this is just to make the blend shapes more efficient so rather than having to calculate the whole body each time it's just working on the head vertices everything is still skin the same way as you can see if I move the neck okay let's start making some shapes go to the sculpting tab and then open the shape editor the shape editor is relatively new to Maya I think it's only been around for a few years but this along with the sculpting tools has made life so much easier for creating blend shapes or morph targets as they're also known select the head model and go to create blend shape a new blend shape node is added into the editor let's rename this to head underscore BS so we know what it's driving now this node doesn't do anything by itself it's just a container for all the shapes we need next click add target we now have our first shape called male underscore head one simply because the model is named that let's work on the lips first as these are the more complicated area rename the target to lips open the slider next to the name controls how much of that shape you will see you can blend between zero and one but you can also go above and below these values too as we will see later this edit button is very important you need to activate it to tell Maya which shape or Target you're working on if you don't Mayor will give you an error but if you ignore that be careful because you may end up editing the wrong target select the grab tool and let's raise this middle section of the upper lip now we've made that change you can see that we can adjust the slider to blend between it being active or not you can also adjust the values in the channel box too as you would traditionally and it's this attribute which the controls will drive if you make a mistake I want to remove part or all of a target you can use the erase target tool here so we can simply paint that away and now if we adjust the slider nothing happens as you would expect for this target we want the lips to be opened so we can see his teeth almost like he's showing them to us the idea is to create them fully open and then we can divide the shape into the sections we need that way when they are all used together you get a nice even shape rather than use the sculpting tools to achieve this I'm actually going to edit the geometry directly so I can be more precise go to face editing mode we want to edit both sides of the lips at the same time so let's activate symmetry hold ctrl and shift and then right click now go to symmetry and then up again to symmetry and enable it as you can see we now have these blue highlighted faces indicating that these are symmetrical so if I work on one side it will also update on the opposite side let's select this line of polygons inside the upper lip you and maybe the line above it too you will notice we also have this colored fall-off going from yellow to orange and then red this is soft selection yellow is a maximum influence over the geometry and that influence fades just as the colors do if I double click on the move tool to bring up the options and open soft selection here we can see that it's activated and we can also see all the options available adjusting fall-off radius will spread the influence as you can see it's wider now to be honest though it's easier to just hold B and then drag with your middle mouse button to adjust this something like this is fine you can also change the fall-off mode switching to volume will make the influence more of an area influence so this will now affect the whole lip area we can now manipulate both lips which isn't what we want changing back to surface is better for us because the fall-off then works on the geometry surface rather than a global area okay let's close this I'm going to raise the upper lip we maybe need a bit more of an influence that's better we have a nice spread going from the lip to the nose now let's select the lower lip and move those down this looks a bit rough but it's given us the main shape we need go back to the sculpting tools now so let's use the grab tool again again make sure symmetry is enabled hold ctrl and shift and then right click to bring up the marking menu go to symmetry and then object X we can see the dots on the opposite side indicating symmetry is now on I'm just going to hold shift and gently soften around the outer lips if you're using the grab tool you can quickly access the smooth tool this way that's better we need these areas of the lips to be raised tomorrow to create a bit more of a corner let's go back to component mode I'm going to select an edge this time and adjust the fall-off pull this up and adjust this one too you these edges form the corner of the mouth so we don't want to edit these at this time blend shapes are additive meaning they will add on to each other so if we control the upper and lower corners at the same time we will get double movement so in this instance we want this shape to ignore these vertices okay let's use the erase target tool again just hold B and then reduce the size with the middle mouse button and just paint to remove that influence now we know where those corner verts C should be we can clean up the rest of the mouth okay let's move these down here and adjust days bring these down and clean up this area you move these down so there's more of an even distribution of vertices and let's clean up the upper lip let's test that now and see how it's looking yeah that's looking good we have a nice blend between the lips being open and closed what I'm going to do now is use the relax tool this will spread the vertices out across the models surface evenly distributing them while retaining the shape just clean up around here and here you don't worry about the lips being away from the actual teeth and don't be tempted to move them back either for this shape you only want the up-and-down movement of the vertices I've also just noticed this model doesn't have the inside of his mouth doesn't matter for this tutorial though but I'll make sure it's added back in at some point clean up this corner a bit more okay let's call that done for now and obviously I would recommend you spending more time on your shapes now we have this main target shape the next step is to divide it into different areas so we need the middle the outer and corner to give the animator more control right click on the lips open target and go to duplicate target what you can see now is the lips target applied twice so as I mentioned earlier the vertices are being moved double the amount set lips open to zero rename the duplicate to upper underscore lip let's make sure we hit that edit button to now use the erase target tool to remove the influence from the lower lip you getting to the corners too we want no influence here and just in there we'll check that let's check the blend shake now to make sure we got everything looks like there's still an influence on the chin so let's get rid of that okay that's better create another duplicate of the lips open target rename that to lower lip you let's turn off edit for the upper lip so now we want to work on the lower lip so we need to repeat the process but this time remove the upper lip influence use the erase target tool again and clear the top lip test that too okay looks good so we no longer need the lips open target but don't delete it we can just disable it with a little white button at the side the lips are now separate so the next step is to divide these further we need another duplicate to work on first let's disable that edit button duplicate the upper lip target let's disable the upper lip for now too and we might as well do the lower lip target too rename the new target to upper underscore lip on the scalp middle just move these and it's the arrays target tool again ah there you go Maya gave us an error telling us the target isn't in edit mode so we better turn that on for this shape we want to create just a peak in the middle so we can remove the influence around it okay that's too strong just undo that let's look at the options here I'll reduce the strength you can also play around with the fall-off if you like to get a softer stroke okay that's a little better so this is where the outer control will be we need to blend from here to here you I'll reduce the strength again yeah that's better we need to keep in mind where we are blending to so the next outer control will have zero influence you looks good so far just try it out we need to clear out the sides of the mouth here good that's got rid of that's one shape done so let's look at the next and it's from here that we will see where the shape editor falls down because with shapes like this we need to be a bit more precise duplicate the upper lip target again and rename that to upper underscore lip underscore outer ah rename the right one this time okay and turn off edit on that target I'm going to disable the middle target to now we can edit the out to target which is going to be between the middle of the mouth and the corner we know the middle vertices are fully influenced by the middle target so let's remove those and the next section needs to be softer maybe a bit softer than that we need to remember where the outer control will be so around three faces in from the middle we can reduce these two let's bring back the middle target shape now ideally what we want is for when these two shapes are both set to want so they are both fully active that the shape matches the original lips open shape at the moment it doesn't so we have lots more work to do first we need to remove the corner influence because there will be another shape which will influence that now it's a case of jumping between the shapes to get the best result which as you can imagine will take a while especially as we want a more precise an exact shape when all these are combined there is an alternative way to edit the blend shape targets and that's to go to the deform menu and then down under paint weights to blend shape in this window you can actually paint the influence of each target this lure can still be time-consuming but luckily I have another approach this approach will give you a blend shape generator which works off a single blend shape and then throws out all the variations you need what's more it's future-proof so if the base shape changes all the output shapes update automatically so let's have a look at setting that up I've started a new scene here and as you can see we have five heads these are all duplicates of the main head model the first has been edited to give us our base lip shape just as we had previously on the next row we have lips middle lips outer and lips corner so these will give us the three different sections we need finally we have the output head which should actually be called lips output I'll just change that now so the main lips head will feed into the three heads below it these will then feed into the output head which will give us the main target shapes select the lips head model and then the lips middle model go to deform blend shapes and open the options let's call this mid underscore PS click apply to edit now select the lips model again and then the lips outer model call this outer underscore PS and click apply finally select the lips head again and the lips corner model call this one corner underscore BS and click apply now select the three middle heads and then the output head create another blend shape node calling this one output underscore BS so we are essentially using blend shapes to create blend shapes select the output head and set each of the blend shape attributes to one now go through each of the middle heads and set their blend shapes to one - as you can see below this then updates the output head with these shapes the output head looks wrong because the blen shapes are all adding together so the lip vertices are moving too far this is what we need though we can now edit the middle heads and the output head will guiders select the lips middle head and go to windows component editor make sure the tab across the top is set to blend shape deformers now select all the vertices down the heads right side so what we're going to do is focus on one side of these models because we can generate the opposite side later in the shape editor if you look in the component editor you can see that each vertex is now listed and we also have its weight value under the mid underscore BS tab set all those values to zero all you have to do is drag down and select them all and then input zero that's remove that blend shapes influence from the model move over to the lips out ahead and do the same removing the influence on its right side finally do the same on the lips corner head too if you look at the output head now that's updated with the changes to what we can do now is go into the main three heads and fine-tune the shapes we need focus on the lips middle head first we want to create a curve like we attempted before but rather than paint them we are going to use exact values select the outer section of the mouth this won't be controlled by this middle control so we can remove the influence here to maybe select a little more we want two full faces along the bottom and three across the top just zero these out what we want to do now is edit the remaining lip vertices so they blend into the outer ones select the middle ones of the lower lip so this is quite angular at the moment but we can soften it in the component editor set the weight value to not point eight okay that looks okay for now now select the outer vertices on the upper lip let's try not point too and move on to the next edge loop let's try not point-eight again so that we have the full influence in the middle but that gradually fades out to where the next control will take over okay we can't see much of a difference with the output head yet so let's continue we're going to work on the next head along now and form the outer shapes first double check the values were used not point eight nor point two and not point eight again okay we know these middle vertices are fully controlled by the previous head so let's reset them select the next row on the upper lip if you remember in the previous head these were set to not point eight so what we want to do is set these up so when both shapes are combined the weight value adds up to one so with that being the case let's set this to not point two moving along these were not point to so to make them out to one we should set these to not point eight let's go down to the lower lip now again thinking back to the previous head these were sets in our point eight so what should there be here yep now point two these vertices here will be fully influenced by the control so should stay at a weight value of one we can also leave the corner vertices for now so if we count backwards there are three edge loops between here and this control one two three so this middle edge loop should be where the corner control will be so we know this control shouldn't influence it select all this area and reset it so if this is where the main control influence will be we need to adjust the next edge loop along let's set that to not 0.5 that's no good really because we now have a sharp angle let's try not point eight instead maybe not point seven okay that's better move to the top lick next just as before we need to remove the vertices which will be controlled by the corner control on the next head so select the vertices of the outer edge loop and reset them that leaves one edge loop left so select those vertices we used not point seven down here let's try the same up here that works we now have the upper and lower lip curls okay on to the corner lip head before we do let's just count back to where the outer lip controls will be one two three polygons okay move to the lips corner model select three polygons in so this is where the previous control would be so let's select these vertices here and we can also select everything before it let's reset those now the upper lip so the middle control has two polygons in so we can select those vertices first and reset them if we do a quick detail to the output head now we can see things are starting to settle down the aim is for this head to look exactly like the original lips model okay let's continue you actually there are some vertices on this model which would probably be adjusted to improve the way it looks the problem is because we reset them previously they won't show up in the component editor now we could just add a vertex which we know has a weight value to the selection and then that will allow us to edit these but let's look at another option go to deform and then under paint ways select blend shape if you select outer underscore BS now you can see the weight values represented as a gradient with white being full and black being no influence what we can do now is interactively paint these values onto the model rather than use a component editor if that's how you prefer to work set the value to not point to because we only want a small influence let's paint these edge loops here you actually I'll do these a bit further in I've changed this to not point for now and increase the influence on this edge loop you if we look closer I can spot edgeloop in there okay so let's set this one to not point four instead and this black one which currently has no influence to not point to you that looks better much smoother it's always worth checking the output head to okay now we need to remember those values again so we can make sure everything adds up evenly so no point too not point fall and not 0.7 okay moving over to the lips corner head this was not point two on the other head so to make it add up to one let's set this to nought point eight moving on this was not point four so let's set these to not point six finally these were not 0.7 before so that makes these not 0.3 oh okay these need to be set to zero let's check the lower lip values now so working from the corner out we have not point to not point four and not point seven let's transfer those across so this should be not point eight you these should be not point six because they were not point for previously and these are not point three if we now check the output head we can see that it's pretty much exactly the same as the original lips head model so this is what it should look like when all those shapes are combined meaning we can get nicer more predictable shapes let's check each shape now to make sure they work I'll turn them all off first karna first there's some movement under the nose and on the chin so we need to fix those the outer shape looks good and so does the middle so we just need to tweak the corner shape let's go up to the main corner head and select those vertices just zero these out you that's better we just need to fix the nose area again we can just quickly select these vertices and set the weights to zero you much better you we can now combine them all to make good shape let's compare it with the original to make sure hmm looks like this area here needs adjusting but I'll come back to those later the beauty of this setup is its non-destructive so each stage can be changed without breaking anything so now we have an output head that will happily generate the middle outer and corner shapes for us so that's three shapes so far plus we could edit the main lip shape and it would update the other stages automatically we need to go one step further now and divide these into upper and lower lip variations select the output head and set all the blend shape attributes to zero duplicate it and move it to the side rename this to the lips underscore upper create another copy and call it lips underscore lower ignore what the name say on the screen for now select the output head and the lips upper head and create a new blend shape node called upper underscore PS repeat this to create another blend shape node for the lower head call this lower underscore BS set each new blend shape nerds attributes to want to activate them now go back to the output head and set those blend shape attributes to one two you should also see the two new heads update on the lower head select all the lower lip and jaw vertices actually this is a lower lip shape so we need to remove the upper lip influence so select the upper lip vertices instead and set them to zero now on the upper head selects the lower lip vertices and reset those you we can now use the output heads blunt shape node to control what is sent to the upper and lower heads we might just want the middle lip shapes or the outer ones or even just the corner so if those done I'm just going to spend some time cleaning them up and adjusting the shapes more so they are more closer to what we need okay so here we are back with our heads we have the main shape with the lips open this then feeds into these heads so here we have the middle of the lips than the outer area and the corner of the mouth these three then feed into this output head this has the main three attributes so we have full control over which parts of the lip we want as you can see this then feeds into these two heads which divide them further into upper and lower lips here we have the middle lip curl split into two so with this setup you can quickly generate six target shapes just from one input shape what this means is you can do whatever you like with the first shape because all the others will update automatically if you were really clever about it you could even have multiple shapes feeding into the main shape too and each of these would then be split into six separate lip sections if we move the vertices on the main shape or if I actually move them on the lips as those are the active vertices you can see this updating on all the other heads okay so now you have your generator what do you do next well you have to now bake the shapes out and this is as easy as duplicating the final heads make sure just the middle blind shape is active on the output head and then duplicate the lips upper and lips lower heads move those to the side so this has basically starred those shapes for us now go back to the output head and change the blend shape attributes so lips middle is off and lips outer is on and duplicate the heads again finally turn off flips outer and then set lips corner to want duplicate the heads again so there we have our six main lip shapes nice and easy we can now hide these heads or better still put them into a lip generate a group so you know what they used for don't delete them though if you have to adjust the shape of the main lips model this is here so you can quickly generate those six variations of the lips in little or no time let's move our six heads over and now we have to rename them let's call this one left lip or / middle you and the one beneath it too left lip lower middle move over and call this one left lip outer middle actually that should be left lip lower outer even I'm getting confused with these names feel free to call these whatever you want to make it easier for you call the one above left lip upper outer for the corner ones just call them the same but replace the outer with corner you also the middle ones don't need the left at the beginning of the names because well they are in the middle now we need to attach these as target shapes open the shape editor you can now see that it's detected the other blend shapes we have in the scene which we used for the blend shape generator let's close them and let's group them to keep them out of the way just drag these here and let's call this lip generator select the main head model and in the shape editor go to create plan shape drag that out of the group rename the new node to head underscore BS just like we had initially with the head bs node selected selects the six lip shapes now go to create ad selection as target the default options are fine you can see these have now been added to the blend shape node let's test them before we move on you okay they all work I'm just going to go through and remove the shape from the end of these names now we have these in and working we can start to think about the opposite side so like the lip lower-middle target and turn down the rest for now even though this is the middle of the mouth we only created his left side right-click on the lip lower middle target and go down to mirror target if you open the options you will see we have a few choices about which direction and access to mirror the shape across the minus direction is fine and object X is OK to click apply the lower lip has now been filled out on both sides now select lick upper middle in the shape editor right-click and select mirror target again that's the upper lip done - if we test the shapes movement now yeah they look good and you can already see what's going to happen when we eventually add the controls which will pull these around let's now work on the other target shapes select all the outer and corner shapes right click and duplicate them let's move these so they are together actually let's group them instead call that group right lip let's select and group the left side too call this group left lip surprisingly I'll disable that left lip group now and that will also turn off everything inside it and let's rename these so remove the copy from the end and change the L to an arm you select right lip or / outer right click and go down to flip target as you can see we are fewer options with this one but flipping across the x-axis is fine click apply and that's flipped we can now do the same for the other three lip shapes but outside done to bring back the left lip group and set each of these sliders back to one also do the middle lips too so there we have ten lip shapes all individuals but when combined you get this nice and even mouth shape so there's plenty of options for the animator to play around with just close these you can also use a group sliders to quickly adjust all the shapes at once we can play around with all these and test how they look right that's the main lip shapes done but there are more we need to create you will be pleased to know however that from here on things get a lot easier as well as raising and lowering the lips we also need to be able to pull the corners out to make the mouth wider and also give him the ability to smile and frown select the head and add another target I'll add this into the left lip group and disable the other shapes I'll call this left lit wide I'm just going to use the sculpting tools from here on select the grab tool okay it would help if I turned on edit see how easy it is to forget all I'm going to do is simply drag this corner out to the side maybe a bit more I like to exaggerate my blend shape slightly because it gives the animator a little more room to be expressive if we turn to the front we can see this needs pushing in to the lips form around the teeth so we have to keep that in mind just smooth this area now try that now and see how it deforms this outer area looks a little strange as it moves I'm going to make the wireframe more visible so we can see what's happening just open the tool settings and set alpha to 1 okay that's better we can see this pinch in the cheek here let's remove that I'll use the erase target tool and remove the influence here okay maybe try the relax tool too a bit around the lips you switch back to the grab now pull this in slightly that's better we now need to make sure that topology on the lips is evenly distributed to so we don't get texture stretching you just a bit more okay that works for now and as I said earlier you should spend more time on your shapes this is just a demo we will turn the wide down for now let's move on to the next target create another one and call this left lips male now this is an optional shape because we will be creating more targets which when combined could give you a smile sometimes though you want the smile to be more unique to the character so what we're going to do is use the same technique use a grab tool to pull the face around to get a basic shape so in this case we need to bring the corner out and up you something like that hold shift now so I can quickly soften this area you I just these a bit more we also want to affect the nostril area too if you're not sure how a shape should look just look in the mirror and see what areas are affected when you pull certain expressions Hollywood says keep in mind other blend shapes you might be using if you have a separate control for the nostril you may want to keep any defamation separate in the area so it's confined to that one control give that a quick test maybe need to adjust the samal you fill out this area you as you can see you can spend a long time tweaking these shapes but remember even once the controls are in you can continue to adjust these shapes right up until the last minute in fact it's sometimes easier to work on the shapes once the controls are connected you just do a few more adjustments you okay I better move on I'll come back to all these later and give them a Polish I'll move this up here if we now use the wide shape and the smile you can see that the lips move too far this is because the vertex movement is being added from Birth shapes so ideally we want a smile but with no side movement you select head BS and add another target call this left lip raise let's move this into the left lip group - so let's set that to one and make sure edit is enabled so all we're going to do is raise the corner of the mouth so ideally when the wide and raised shapes are combined we get something similar to the smile use the grab tool to move the corner up you if we test that initially with the wide now we can already see they were well together let's now go in and refine the shape you even out the topology too you smooth this you test it with the wide again I'll just check this mail yeah that's a bit smoother let's turn both the wide and the Reds back on now adjust and soften these areas you reduce this crease slightly turn the white shape [Music] okay this needs fixing you that looks better but I could spend more time on them let's add another target now this one will be left lip lower move this here this is going to be the opposite shape to the rise so Marva frown but we want the movement down not out move this down here you soften it now you rework that corner area that's looking okay for now I'm not going to spend too much time on these shapes now as I think you have the basic idea of what we need to do to achieve them the sculpting tools make shared creations so much easier so let's say we are happy with those so we now need to create the opposite side right click on the left lip wide shape and duplicate move this up to the right look group move the right target there we go and remove copy from the name and change L to R just activate the right lip group so we can see it and turn the rest of the shapes off all we need to do now is right-click and go to flip target you now we have the wide mouth on both sides of the mouth we can now repeat that for the other lip shapes when we are happy let's add another target now so select head two Bs and click add target rename this to l underscore cheek and let's move it up here for now what we want this shape to represent is when he puffs out his cheeks let's look at sculpting this you actually what would be better is if we use the inflate tool as you can see as I click the geometry is being pulled out but rather than in a linear way like if we use a graph tool it looks more like he has something in his cheek like a hamster I think this is too strong so let's turn the strength down a little move this in here undo the last sculpt we did it was far too extreme another way of reducing the strength of the brush is to hold down B if you then move forwards and backwards with the mouse or up and down with the stylus that changes a line in the middle which indicates a strength that's better and more manageable just to work here you and maybe suffering that back a touch too you I'll switch to the grab tool now we can now tweak the shape with a bit more precision and try and get a crease here you raise this area below the eye - if you puff out your own sheet you will see this area is affected - so we need to represent that in this character you maybe soften this back down a bit too you give that a try looking good so far you let's just do a little bit more on the crease here you okay let's leave that there for now as I keep saying we can always come back and work on these layer so let's create the opposite side right click on the target and go to duplicate target there's the copy so let's move that into the right-side group unless flip it nice and easy both cheeks done you we should rename this before we move on to you we also have these extra lip shapes which we created earlier so let's add the right-side versions of these select lip raised lip lower and lip smile and then right click and go to duplicate target you can duplicate more than one at a time move those into the right lip group - like them and flip them finally fix the names you so there we have both sides and he's happy about it although that's a bit of a strange smile what we have now is a good foundation of shapes which we can use to animate this guy so he can communicate I'll bring back the controls for a second what will happen and we will look into this in the next video is when this control is moved for example it will trigger the left cheek blend shape the same with the lips this control will trigger the upper-middle shape so you can start to get an idea of where this is heading there were lots more shapes we can create from here and how many you use is entirely up to you although I would suggest that if this model is to be used in a game engine you need to check how many shapes are allowed as there will likely be a limit from here we should add a sneer and squint shape so we can adjust the upper cheek areas we should also add targets to move the eyebrows because these are obviously quite important we could even add in some targets so we can animate the nose so what I'm going to do now is take a break here and work on all the other shapes we need for now and I will be back in a second so here we have the model with the shapes added over in the shape editor you can see I also added some new groups right lip and left lip have all the lip shapes we created earlier the mouth group has more of the global or generic mouth shapes although the lower and upper middle lips should maybe be in a different group I'll have to think about that here you see we have lips left right up and down these will move the lips as a whole like this really but it will work off one control which will make it much easier to animate with I'll just bring the controls back again this global mouth control will trigger those four target shapes depending on where it is you just hide those again you will also see there are two other shapes here hooker and clump this is the polka shape kind of like he's blowing you a kiss you can also adjust this with the jaw control to open his mouth slightly and play around with both to achieve an OL shape the clump is just a small movement but it's used for when he's creating those M sounds in the first group we have the cheeks we also have a snare which affects this area here and it also affects his nostril slightly the squint affects the opposite side but they also work well together we can now select them both and adjust them at the same time the brow has a similar setup use both to raise a whole brow or you can adjust them independently we have an obvious issue here with the normal map where the texture is stretching so that needs to be fixed but you get the general idea if I turn off Hardware shading you can see the topologies okay it's just the texture I also added a few shapes in so you can animate the nose a simple raised under squash and also want to flare the nostrils one thing I want to point out if you see we can raise the nose but we don't have a shape to lower it this is because we can use negative shapes too so instead of the slider going between 0 & 1 we could input minus 1 instead as you can see this changes the slider limits now so we can go into negative figures what this does is simply takes a vertex movement from the main target shape but moves them in the opposite direction so as you can see from this one shape we now have two and it makes the nose more flexible this doesn't always work so be warned it does depend on the main shape as that dictates what the negative versions will be like and more often than not you will end up with a strange looking shape with that knowledge though you could go through and see what other shapes would benefit from this the nerve squash for example adding a negative value lets you also pull the nose out we can do the same with the nostrils too in fact you could test this with all the other shapes to see what extra movement you can squeeze out of them it also works well with the cheek rather than just puffing the cheek out you can also suck it in looks like I haven't added the right-side versions of these shapes yet so I'll do those after the video you will be able to see them in the source files as you can see now we have lots of target shapes already so the list is growing if I select the blend shape nerd we can also see them in the channel box already and waiting to be driven by user-friendly controls so there we have it all the main blend shapes set up and ready to go an animator could now take this and animate it using the channel box but what we are going to do in the next video is make it more interactive and streamline the animation process by connecting the controls to the blend shapes so I hope you've enjoyed this video if you have please let me know in the comments below also let me know if you have any questions and tell me what future videos you would like to see remember to download the files from my cube brush page so you can follow along with these tutorials and why not say thanks with a small donation buy my coffee page as always remember to like this tutorial and subscribe to my channel to keep up to date with future videos this is UNT's egi signing off and I will see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: antCGi

Views: 23,881

Keywords: rigging, maya, autodesk, maya3d, rigging in maya, rig, 2019, maya 2019, gamedev, game art, game development, game rig, face, face rig, maya face rig, facial rig, game face rig, expressions, happy, sad, smile, grin, cheeks, lip rig, lips, nose, nostril, sneer, squint, shape editor, blendshape, blend shape, component editor, paint weights, mouth controls, eyebrow

Id: RbQM82Ta6zE

Length: 75min 8sec (4508 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020