Rigging the Human Face in Maya
In this Maya tutorial, we will learn about a wide variety of useful tools and techniques for rigging a human face. Software required: Maya 2011 and up.
What you'll learn
In this Maya tutorial, we will learn about a wide variety of useful tools and techniques for rigging a human face. Throughout the tutorial we will focus on providing animators with the control they need to create natural expressions with a control rig that computes fast. We will also creatively explore several techniques and tools that can be used to create realistic deformations. Step by step, we will construct a facial control system that is robust and animator-friendly. We will learn everything from how to create a reverse-jaw rig, rigging with curves for flexibility, how to create sticky controls, fleshy eyes, and we will also cover how to set up preset expressions for fast animation. Software required: Maya 2011 and up.
Table of contents
- The Expectations of the Facial Control Rig 2m
- Setting up a Shelf to Access Our Rigging Tools 11m
- Building the Primary Bones of Our Head Rig 8m
- Creating the Jaw Bones 8m
- Creating the Eye Bones 5m
- Group Hierarchy for the Facial Rig 7m
- Binding the Face 4m
- Blocking in the Weights of the Lower Jaw 7m
- Blocking in the Weights of the Head 4m
- Refine the Deformations Around the Corners of the Mouth 9m
- Correcting the Deformations of the Neck and Head 13m
- Using Curves to Control the Deformations of the Eyebrows 4m
- Rigging the Brow Curves with Clusters 9m
- Weighting the Clusters of the Brow Curves 7m
- Making the Brow Curves Influence Objects 4m
- Fine-tuning the Brow Deformations 9m
- Setting up the Nose Bones 7m
- Painting Weights on the Nose 10m
- Beginning the Lip Rig 9m
- Blocking the Weights of the Lips / Connecting the Blend Shape 12m
- Correcting the Deformations of the Lips 11m
- Finishing the Lip Deformations 8m
- Building the Eyelid Rig 4m
- Deforming the Eyelids 15m
- Beginning the Fleshy Eye Rig 4m
- Wrapping up the Fleshy Eye Rig 8m
- Setting up the Cheek Deformations 8m
- Tying the Cheek Shapes to the Blend Shape Head 9m
- Completing the Cheek Rig 8m
- Extra Cheek Deformations 7m
- Setting up the Lip Rolls 7m
- Finishing the Lip Roll Functionality 12m
- Creating Animation Controls for the Head and Neck 11m
- The Jaw Controls 10m
- Setting up a System to Glue the Lip Controls to the Face 8m
- Finishing the Lip Connection Meshes for the Sticky Controls 7m
- Gluing the Lip Controls to the Mouth 7m
- The Lip Controls 13m
- Driving the Lip Clusters with the Lip Controls 6m
- Building a Control to Translate the Mouth 10m
- Custom Attributes for the Lip Rolls and Cheek Expansion Shapes 5m
- Creating the Nose Controls 5m
- Completing the Nose Rig 5m
- Rigging the Eyes 3m
- The Eye Controls 6m
- Finalizing the Eye Rig 5m
- The Brow Controls 5m
- Creating Tongue Bones / Binding the Tongue Mesh 8m
- Finishing the Tongue Rig 11m
- Trouble-shooting the Lip Controls 6m
- Cleaning up the Control Rig 3m
- Character Sets for Animation 5m
- Preset Expressions for Fast Animation 6m
- Connecting the Facial Rig to a Character Control Rig 7m
About the author
Delano works avidly as an animation author at Pluralsight. Starting his career at animation studios like Shilo, Delano has developed a strong passion for his talents. His animation and rigging background help him teach and create some of the most-watched training on Pluralsight. A few of his favorite projects that he has contributed to include: Character Interaction in Maya and in Softimage, Rigging the Human Face in Maya, Rigging Sea Creatures in Maya, and Rigging and Animating Transforming... more