Rigging a Face in Maya

Introduction

• Facial rigging from scratch with Maya
• Making the most of the exercise files

1. Getting Started with Facial Rigging

• Facial topology
• Prepping the model for rigging

2. Creating Blend Shapes

• Blend shape stategies
• Modeling mouth shapes
• Testing blend shapes
• Additional lip shapes
• Eyelid shapes
• Creating in-between shapes
• Extracting left and right shapes
• Connecting the blend shapes

3. Joint and Skeleton Setup

• Joint and skinning strategies
• Setting up the skeleton
• Getting the jaw pivot right
• Upper face joints
• Skinning the head
• Fine-tuning jaw deformation
• Upper face deformations

4. Rigging the Head

• Attaching hair and eyebrows
• Attaching teeth to jaw
• Using joints for eyes
• Creating spline controls
• Connecting head controls

5. Rigging Eyes and Eyelids

• Controlling eye direction
• Creating gaze control
• Connecting lower eyelid controls
• Connecting upper eyelid controls

6. Setting Up Mouth Controls

• Connecting the jaw control
• Creating mouth and lip control splines
• Rigging upper lip controls
• Rigging lower lip controls
• Multi-axis controls for smile and frown
• Finishing the multi-axis control

7. Finishing the Rig

• Controlling the cheeks
• Eyebrow setup
• Using clusters
• Testing the rig

Conclusion

• Next steps