2009

Table Of Contents
move up slightly also. (For many people, skin at the chin and neck moves
during smiling.)
10 In the tool settings editor for the Paint Cluster Weights Tool, set the Paint
Operation to Smooth. Paint any region where the surface has become
irregular. Irregular regions are typically indicated by jagged wireframe
curves (isoparms) or where a grayscale color makes an abrupt change to
a lighter or darker color. Smoothing averages the weights of the stroked
points with the weights of the surrounding region. The Value setting has
no effect on smoothing.
11 Replace and smooth weights in other regions of the face until you are
satisfied with the smile. For example, you might want to reduce the weight
values at the side of the nose and immediately below the nose.
Your smilingFace should now have a slight smile as a result of your cluster
weight edits.
12 Hide the Paint Attributes Tool settings window.
Creating a blend shape
In this section, you create a blend shape deformer to control the smile on
baseFace (base object) using the smilingFace (target object). A blend shape
deformer is ideal for facial animation, where you need a number of facial
positions to be readily available for use in an animation sequence. With a
blend shape deformer, you can set up a characters face to blend between a
smile, frown, smirk, and so on.
In the next steps, you create a blend shape deformer to change the baseFace
into the smile of smilingFace.
To create a blend shape deformer
1 In the Outliner, select smilingFace and shift-select baseFace, specifically
in this order.
The smilingFace (the first selection) is called the target object, while
baseFace (the second selection) is called the base object. The objective of
a blend shape operation is to morph the base shape into the target shape.
2 Select Create Deformers > Blend Shape >
.
3 In the Blend Shape node text box, type blendShape, then click Create.
338 | Chapter 7 Character Setup