Week 1

Boris

 Cluster & Blend Shapes

Smiling Face

Raised Brows

Eye Brow Animation

The facial animation was not that hard to do. Initially, I had slight difficulties in doing it because it takes me some time to understand how to do the clusters and blend shapes. But I felt that this exercise was easier compared to Boris exercise. The Boris exercise took me quite long to complete it because I had to adjust the mouth movements according to the sound track.

Qns:

Does a blendshape require the base mesh and the target mesh to have the same number of vertices? Explain your answer, with reference to how blendshapes actually work.

Yes, the base mesh and the target mesh must have the same number of vertices. When the target mesh is being modified, it will affect the base mesh.

Reference:

http://animagimation.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-creating-blendshapes-in-maya.html


Can blendshapes only be used for facial animation? If not, prove it! Animate something and post it on your  blog.


If you want a character to look angry, you might decide to create a target mesh of the character's head and then modify it to have an angry expression. This is NOT how it should be done. Why not? And what would be a better approach? (Hint: you want to give the animator as much freedom as possible.)