For this 644 project I will be creating a face rig for my flying monkey character. The final product will be an addition to my demo reel, showing off the capabilities of the rig.

My focus on this project is to complete a facial rig with a broad range of expressiveness which is needed for Feature Animation.

My process will be to develop a facial rig system with a controllable GUI (hopefully scripted). The system will attempt to have direct controls(joints/clusters) working in conjunction with blendshapes. The blendshapes will provide a set of art directed targets that all animators would have access to, and ensuring all poses are consistent. Direct controls allow the animator to move past the linear transformations that are typical of blendshapes and provide the animator with more organic layered shapes. The downside is that it becomes more difficult for animators to match facial poses.

The best of both worlds is to have direct controls that work in conjuntion with blendshapes. A set of pre-modeled shapes that are art directed will supply broad global motion for character poses, and a series of direct controls will add deformation on top of blendshapes to achieve an organic free form layered animation.

Remaining Schedule:

Week of Oct 31 Basic Head and Face Joints, Eyes
Week of Nov 7 Continue Blendshapes
Week of Nov 14 Layer direct controls
Week of Nov 21 Tweaks / GUI control system
Week of Nov 28 GUI control system
Week of Dec 5 Rig Demo

Monday, November 1, 2010

joints

Where am I now?
I took a step back from the blendshapes for a moment. I realized I had gotten ahead of myself. I need to get the underlying joint structure in first. I've put in joints for the jaw and upper mouth. I am currently skinning this right now.

locators show where bones are placed by script.
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