Tag Archives: character setup

Maya Face Rigging Basics – a Maya 2017 Character Setup Tutorial

Setting up a character’s body is one thing – but Maya face rigging is on a whole other level! It isn’t uncommon to have more joints in the face than in the rest of the body combined. In fact, you may end up with double or triple the number!

So how do we handle the complexity of all those joints, and the accompanying skin weighting issues it brings?
Continue reading Maya Face Rigging Basics – a Maya 2017 Character Setup Tutorial

Joints or Blendshapes?

Reader Ric Williams emailed me a raft of questions about animation with blendshapes versus joints, mostly for facial animation. I thought I would post my answers here, as others might find them helpful!

Q1: When is it best to use joints or blendshapes?

Historically, it used to be that blendshapes meant pre-rendered, and joints were used for real-time stuff. Continue reading Joints or Blendshapes?