Expert: Andre Hickman - 1/24/2009

Question
Hi there :D



I have just started (October) learning Maya at my school.  Right now I'm in a group of five working to complete a animation short for a film festival, the deadline being February 14th.



The problem is that we are quite a bit behind schedule, so I'm using some free-time to try and get some work done.  The only problem is that I have no teacher to ask my questions when I run into problem.  I use google a lot, but the language people use is usually way to technical/advance for me to understand since I only know the rough basic.



My problem right know is that I am trying to rig the main character for the movie using blendshapes since he never talk and never walk on his own (just small things like bending head back and forth, looking right/left, opening and closing the mouth).  But when I try to test the blendshape, things I have parented, the eyes and the teeth, just stay behind in mid air.  My teacher told me to delete the teeth and eyes from the duplicates I use to make the blendshape.  But I wonder if I misunderstood him somehow or he meant something else.



Sorry if my question is hard to understand.



In advance, thanks for your help.


Answer
Hey Kenneth,

I don't want to give you unhelpful info, because I do not use Maya, I use 3DS Max.  But I will try to steer you in the right direction.

The blendshapes that you are talking about sound much like morph targets in 3ds max, where each blendshape would be a different static, posed facial expression, and by adding percentages of the blendshape, you create new expressions on your main character.

If that is the case, you teacher is telling you to delete the eyes and teeth from the blenshapes, i.e. make your blendshapes with empty eye sockets and an empty mouth. Don't include them in your blendshapes fuctioning at all.

From there, if Maya has dummy objects, or null objects, try to link a null box or something to the center of the head.  If you can't figure out the null objects, just make a small box a child to the center of the head.  Then make the box the parent of the eyes and teeth.  That way, the box or null is a child of the head, and the eyes and teeth are a child of the box.

Now if your mesh is a full body mesh, you will want to link the null/box to just the sub-selection of the head vertices.

I hope this helps...I'm sorry but I just don't know enough about Maya, and I am actually going to start learning it in February.

I would normally have rejected this question because it is outside of my area of expertise, as far as the software goes, but I thought that I might be able to help you with general practices.

Cheers,
Andre'