took me a few attempts to get into the swing of it but i was then well away with creating the expressions for my model. Like anything in Maya, i find the more you do it, the more you become quicker and clever about how to make something. Im trying not to overcomplicate the expressions but to allow me to have a mixture so i can blend a few together to create even more expressions.
During this stage, I think its now when you start to realise the limitations and the positive factors about your characters facial design. For example, im very pleased with the brow section of my model, it offers a lot of opportunity for extreme as well as subtle expression...there's a lot of give which i think shows from looking even at the screen print. However if i were to note a limitation i would say the mouth has its restrictions especially around the very inner edges..it feels quite flat at times. Another area that has caused issues are the eyelids in which to raise and make them disappear i had to alter the size of my characters eye so they disappeared smoothly, this is a design fault though so i have to make do with what i have on these concerns. It would have been easier to create if the eye geometry had sat behind the face however i was reflecting the style of claymation. I guess i shall have to see the outcome whilst smoothed, its not a disaster by any means, its just given me something to think about when designing my next character.
Blend shapes has been a fun process, i've literally been staring and pulling weird faces in the mirror and simplifying those shapes to get the expressions for my model. It feels very creative, like crafting clay, its just annoying (as i was warned by Matt) about highlighting all the vertices of the teeth....teeth are a pain and i would like to do some further reading into this for next time.
More issues with Maya...nothing new and exciting, just further notes that prove my concerns over my copy of Maya...after creating blend shapes...they no longer worked...ive had to keep saving so many versions of files 01....01newest...01newestA....so on and so on. i need me a new copy of Maya FAST!
Heres my control sliders set up for Poca. Each slider is labelled and split up into mouth, brow and eye controls as well as according to left or right side. These are then parented to head control so that they will follow the model when she moves. I couldn't necessarily depend on the -1 to 1 limits to give me the opposite of the expression as it generally didn't pull on the vertices correct, however i had made enough expressions to cover this factor. Each slider is locked so there's no worry of accidental keying and the sliders themselves are locked apart from the translate y which is required.
No comments:
Post a Comment