What you'll learn

In this Maya and Mudbox tutorial, we'll learn to move Blend Shapes back and forth between the two programs. When creating characters for animation, facial expressions can be an important part of the performance. There are different ways for achieving these expressions, and one of these is to use Blend Shapes. Blend Shapes are modified versions of geometry (facial geometry in this case) that illustrate a particular muscle movement or facial expression. We can then animate transitions between these shapes to get facial animation. There are lots of ways to create these shapes and Mudbox is one that works very well. We'll learn to create shapes from scratch using Sculpt Layers and Sculpt Layer Groups. We'll create a library of smaller shapes and then combine those into an overall expression. We'll end this Maya and Mudbox training by exploring the use of the Pose tools in creating these shapes and learn to set up Blend Shapes made of multiple objects. Software required: Maya 2015, Mudbox 2015.