In the next steps, you
duplicate the face again and reshape the duplicate into a new facial
expression. You then add the new face to the blend shape node to
create another slider in the Blend Shape Editor.
To create another facial expression
- Set the Blend Shape editor
slider value to 0 to return baseFace to the position it had at the
beginning of the lesson.
- Make a duplicate of baseFace, name it
raisedBrow, and move it to the left of baseFace so that all three
faces are visible for comparison.
- Make sure raisedBrow is selected.
- In
the perspective view, select Show > Isolate Select
> View Selected. Select this menu item again in the
front view.
This displays only the
selected object (raisedBrow) in the views. This is necessary to
avoid selecting unwanted vertices in the next steps. The view’s
label indicates isolate is turned on.
- In the front view, position the pointer
over the face, right-click and select Vertex. Drag
a selection box around the vertices in the region of the eyebrows
and forehead as shown below.
For these vertices, you
need to select the vertices by dragging a selection box rather than
by using the Paint Selection Tool. The eyebrows
have vertices that lie behind its outer surface. The Paint Selection
Tool selects only vertices at the outer surface. Dragging a selection
box selects all vertices in the boxed region, including vertices
that lie behind the outer surface.
- In the side view, hold down the Ctrl
(Windows and Linux) or Control (Mac OS X) key and drag a selection
box around the vertices at the side of the head to turn off their
selection (see the following figure).
- Switch to wireframe display mode and
dolly the camera from various close-up views to make sure you select
all the vertices on and under the eyebrow. If you miss a few vertices,
subsequent deformations will not work correctly. Also, make sure
you don’t select vertices at the side or back of the head.
- Select
Create Deformers > Cluster.
- In the perspective view, turn off the
selection of Show > Isolate Select > View Selected.
Do this again in the front view.
By turning off these
menu selections, Maya displays all objects in the views again.
- In the perspective view, drag the cluster
up along its Y-axis a small amount until raisedBrow looks like the
face on the left:
To add the new target object to the blend
shape
- In the Outliner,
select raisedBrow and Shift-select baseFace (the order of selection
is important). The raisedBrow is the target, while baseFace is the base
object.
- Select
Edit Deformers > Blend Shape > Add > . In
the options window, turn on Specify Node and
enter blendShape in the BlendShape Node box. Click
the Apply and Close button.
When
you created the blend shape for the smile, Maya created a node named
blendShape that contains the slider attributes that adjust the blend into
the smilingFace target. The Add operation creates a blend shape
for the raisedBrow and adds it to the blendShape node. This adds
a slider to the node’s Blend Shape editor
for adjusting the raised brow deformations.
- To display the Blend Shape editor,
select
Window
> Animation Editors > Blend Shape.
- You can use the sliders alone or in combination
to create a smile with raised eyebrows, a frown with lowered eyebrows,
and so on.
- You can optionally select raisedBrow
and edit the cluster weights to tune the deformation of the eyebrow
region as desired. See
Editing cluster weights for
details. An example weighting follows:
TipAfter you create
a blend shape, you can optionally hide or delete a target object
(in this lesson, smilingFace and raisedBrow). If you delete a target,
you improve Maya processing time but lose the capability to manipulate
the cluster handle. For versatility, many animators hide the target
rather than delete it. Hiding the target is necessary when you render
the scene. It is also useful when you want to unclutter the scene
view.