How did I deal with…?
Skinning Facial Expressions Using Maya and ZBrush
The goal of this project is to make a short film, animating 1 character in 1 scene over a natural background. I'm solving animation and deformations with joints, character sets and Maya Muscle. The protagonist has 1 single facial expression, namely a smile:
This is the workflow I'm following:
- Using quads
- Only head, jaw, and eyes joints
- Using blendShapes from ZBrush for expressions
1. Using Quads
My model is using quads, which leads to better deformations (quads can bend into 2 tris, tris cannot) and the topology is based on edge loops, which makes her face anatomically correct. I just have to add one smooth node and that enables potential infinite subdivisions:
2. Minimum joints
The only joints driving the whole head and face are jaw, head and eye joints:
3. blendShapes from ZBrush
I'm importing target meshes sculpted in ZBrush with the same polycount and order as my neutral model. I'm applying them as blendShapes on a copy of my head model.
Linking blendShapes from Shape Editor to rotations on jaw and eyes joint.
Linking blendShapes from Shape Editor to attributes on my face control.
After approving my block animation, I can move on, adding detailed animation, including facial expressions. In this case:
- Opening her eyes through an attribute in her eyes control
- Lifting her nostrils through an attribute in her visor control, and
- She smiles through an attribute in her mouth control.
Once approving the detailed animation, I'm caching all deformations and sending a low poly animated version of her body, using Alembic, into:
- another scene with background and lighting information, and
- a second scene with cloth and grooming information.
The next steps in the pipeline are simulating all VFX, and rendering and post‑producing the short film. If you want to know more about rigging and skinning, please click on these case study cards:
