Expert: Russell Calabrese - 6/15/2008

Question
Hello there.  
I use Maya and I hoping you can answer these quick questions or at least partly.  I have been practicing modeling heads using a method on www.simply3dworld.com.  He models all of his heads with the mouths open.  Most other tutorials I see model the heads with the mouth either closed or barely open.  Which is better when I get ready to animate my head or does it make any difference?  Also, can you do you blend shapes by converting your head to a subdivion head and then after doing all the blend shapes, convert back to polygons and smooth it?

Answer
Hello Vincent.

Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I was out of town.

The reason to make your models with the mouth open is so you can build and work on the inside of the mouth and see it all clearly. Did you ever see a dentist work on a patient with the patient's mouth shut? It's pretty inconvenient. Use whatever is comfortable for you. When you get done modeling you can shut the mouth of the character to have a "pretty picture" of your character. You probably would want to set the mouth shut as default when animating since that's how the character is mostly going to be. (Unless you're modeling Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel from the Simpsons) The second part of your question is a little beyond my scope of knowledge. Common sense tells me  that whatever is easiest for you to work with is what you should do. If you were working in a studio they would probably have a specific way to do these things and you'd have to follow studio protocol. If your working on your own stuff use what ever works for you to get the results you want. See if you can get someone on an online Maya users group to help you out with some of the inside tricks of the trade. Most animators are willing to share tricks they come up with.


I hope this was helpful.

Russell