Week 1- Facial Animation with Blend Shapes

Exercise 1a:
Boris -"The Dark Side"


Reflection:

After attempting this exercise, I think it is easier to do facial expressions than body movements. Before doing this exercise, I always thought that mouth plays the most important part of the whole facial expression because it is where the voice is coming out from but actually, the brows and head is as important too. If you just say out the without any expressions, it does not look interesting.

Exercise 1b:
Short Animation of Myself- Don't mess with Boris






Reflection:

A short video of myself. Boris is a guy so I asked my guy friend to say out the sentence while I mimic and do the facial expressions because if I were to put my voice, it does not look appropriate. I animate it with the help of the video reference and my friend's voice. Convert the video to .wav and import it to Maya. After getting used to Boris, it was easier to do this exercise.

Exercise 2a:
Cluster and Blend Shape Deformers


My progress of the activity done.

Firstly, I have to duplicate the baseFace. This is because I have to create a 'Smiling Face' so that I can see the difference with the actual face.

After duplicating, I clicked on vertex and highlight all around the mouth area, except for the mouth. As you can see, there are some dots under the chin, I have to remove all the dots and make sure that only the mouth area was being highlighted.


To create a smile, I have to create a cluster for the highlighted area and move it up a little. It does not look as smooth as I wanted so to make it smooth, I have to use the Paint Cluster Weights Tool.

Before

After (The mouth is being lift up a little.)

I have to create Blend Shape to control the smile.


Finally I had to create duplicate another face and create a raised brows which is on the left side. The methods are the same.

Exercise 2b:
Different Expression- Shock


My Progress of the task done.

I followed the steps that was given and create my own that is the 'shocked face'. Instead of highlighting the whole mouth, I only highlighted the lower jaw so that it can open. As for the rest of it, I followed the tutorial.

Exercise 3:
Questions and Answers

Answer these questions on your weblog.

1. Does a blend shape require the base mesh and the target mesh to have the same number of vertices? Explain your answer,with reference to how blend shapes actually work.

Answer:
Yes,blend shape requires them to have the same vertex order. Its essential to create a model that represents the end of the sequence first and then derive all the in-between targets form the final model. This way, when you create the blend shape sequence, the deformation behaves as you would expected, and the geometry is not mangled or distorted during animation.

Reference:
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=tk-OKdoqKVcC&pg=PA329&lpg=PA329&dq=Does+a+blend+shape+require+the+base+mesh+and+the+target+mesh+to+have+the+same+number+of+vertices&source=bl&ots=fihUyNdL4z&sig=NTuARUecW42S4SjeTSuXyH03rC8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EMgPT4mKNorNrQebtPmDAg&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

2. Can blendshapes only be used for facial animation? If not, prove it! Animate something and post it on your blog.

Answer:
No, it is able to create certain types of animation. Blend shapes can also be used on muscles or any other part of the body. I can also be used on any other shapes or objects.







3. If you want a character to look angry, you might decide to create a target mesh of the character's head and then modify it to have an angry expression. This is NOT how it should be done. Why not? And what would be a better approach? (Hint: You want to give the animator as much freedom as possible.)

Answer:
It should not be done in that way because animator does not have the freedom to animate different expressions and will be stuck on one that is the angry expression.