Now let's dive into character rigging. We're going to start with facial animation and take a very quick look at how to create facial shapes for animating your characters. I'm going to start with this little creature that we've been building. And the way that you do facial animation in Blender is using what are called shape keys. Now, you can find these under the Object Data panel. So if I select my object and under my Object Data panel, you'll see a rollout here called Shape Keys.
Now what this does is it remembers various shapes that you model into the character. So this is a little bit different than morphing or blend shapes in that everything is located here. You don't create separate models and then combine them together; you just create them on the fly. So I'm going to hit the plus sign here, and this creates a key called Basis, and that's just my basic key. This is my neutral position of my character. And I'm going to keep that like it is.
And I'm going to add in a second one by hitting the plus key again. And let's just do a really simple mouth shape. I'm going to go ahead and do one called Closed_mouth, and we're just going to type that in. And now, all we have to do is model that. So let me show you very quickly how this works. I'm going to hit the Tab key to go into Edit mode, and I want to be in Vertex mode right now. And I just want to close the character's mouth. So I'm going to turn on Proportional Editing-- that will help me a little bit--and make sure that I've got my proportions right by hitting G and rolling my middle mouse button.
And now once I do, I'm just going to go ahead and start moving parts of his mouth so that we can close his mouth. And again, I'm just Shift+Right-clicking and selecting these vertices here, and so I'm just trying to get that mouth closed. So as I start to move up, you'll notice that my proportional editing is pushing that part of the mouth up, so I'm just going to turn that off for a second here and try and get his mouth fairly closed. And I can even pull it down a little bit from the top here, so I'm just going to go ahead and select that vertices along the top of his mouth and pull that down as well, and there we go.
So now I have another shape. Now I can continue to model this. I can make really any shape that I want, but once I'm there, all I have to do is jump to Object mode and the object goes back to the base key. Now, this closed mouth that I just created has a number associated with it, and that is the value that we get right here. So I've got my character now opening and closing his mouth. Now you can see it probably a little bit easier if I put on a subdivision surface.
So I'm going to go over to my Object Modifier panel and select Subdivision Surface and then go back to my Object Data panel, and let's go ahead and see how he closes his mouth. Okay, so now his mouth isn't quite closed, but we can certainly fix that by going back into Edit mode. So when I go into Edit mode, you can see that because I have Closed_mouth selected, I have that key, no matter what it's dialed in at. So then I can select these underlying vertices here. Actually, I'm going to go into Edge mode and select these.
There we go and there we go. So now I've got his mouth closed. So we can continue along with this. This is just a real basic example here. You can do multiple mouth shapes. You can do shapes for the eyes. You can do blinks, that sort of thing. You can really create as many shapes as you want. And once you have multiple shapes, you can dial them in or mix them. Now, I have one that I've already done here, and this is called Chap11_02.blend, and in this one I added in another shape key, and that's a blink.
So what I can do is I can take that and I can blink the character and I can close the mouth, so these are additive. So you can add them together and mix them together just like you would with any other type of shape animation.
Author
Updated
8/16/2017Released
2/24/2012- Navigating in 3D space
- Selecting, rotating, and scaling objects
- Using Snap to move objects precisely
- Creating mesh primitives and extrusions
- Subdividing meshes
- Creating a simple creature
- Joining mesh objects and stitching vertices
- Organizing a scene with layers, groups, and hierarchies
- Assigning glossy and reflective materials to objects
- Creating bump maps
- Creating sky and ambient light
- Understanding ambient occlusion
- Adding motion blur and depth of field
- Editing animation in the Graph Editor
- Building and animating a simple character
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Q: This course was updated on 8/12/2014. What changed?
A: We added a single movie on unwrapping objects, a technique that works differently in Blender 2.7. The rest of the instructions in the course work equally well with Blender 2.6 and Blender 2.7.
Q: This course was updated on 06/20/2017. What changed?
A: The following topic was updated: using the Node Editor.
Related Courses
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Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland156h 54m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 8s
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Download Blender26s
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1. The Blender Interface
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Navigating in 3D space4m 59s
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Configuring user preferences6m 27s
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2. Selecting and Translating Objects
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Selecting objects6m 12s
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Moving objects4m 35s
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Rotating objects2m 48s
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Scaling objects2m 16s
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Changing an object's origin5m 27s
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Selecting pivot points3m 22s
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3. Modeling
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Creating mesh primitives6m 36s
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Editing mesh objects7m 39s
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Proportional editing3m 52s
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Sculpt mode5m 3s
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Extrusions5m 18s
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Smooth shading objects2m 23s
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Subdividing meshes5m 12s
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4. Advanced Modeling
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Working with modifiers5m 52s
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Creating a simple creature7m 54s
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Joining mesh objects3m 37s
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Stitching vertices4m 52s
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Finalizing a simple creature4m 48s
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Creating text3m 29s
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Boolean tools2m 59s
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Vertex groups4m 51s
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5. Staying Organized
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Using the Outliner8m 22s
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Using layers4m 30s
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Creating groups2m 48s
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Working with scenes4m 2s
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Creating hierarchies2m 54s
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6. Applying Materials
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Diffuse shaders6m 47s
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Working with specularity5m 56s
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Additional shading options2m 37s
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Creating reflections8m 29s
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Subsurface scattering5m 59s
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7. Adding Textures
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Adding a simple texture6m 11s
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Using bitmaps6m 53s
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Using UV projections5m 56s
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UV mapping a character6m 35s
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Fine-tuning UV mapping6m 7s
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Displacement mapping3m 48s
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Using the node editor5m 58s
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8. Working with Light
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Adding lamps to a scene8m 44s
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Using spot lamps4m 20s
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Fine-tuning buffer shadows6m 19s
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Using Hemi lamps2m 32s
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Working with Area lamps5m 17s
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Adding background images3m 19s
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Creating sunlight6m 6s
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Ambient occlusion7m 11s
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9. Cameras and Rendering
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Working with cameras4m 47s
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Render properties5m 7s
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Rendering animation5m 13s
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Adding motion blur4m 10s
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Creating depth of field7m 8s
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10. Basic Animation
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Animating objects6m 26s
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Using the Dope Sheet4m 53s
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Path animation4m 32s
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11. Character Rigging
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Understanding armatures6m 2s
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Animating in Pose mode2m 47s
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Creating a test animation9m 24s
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12. Rendering in Cycles
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Working with image maps2m 26s
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Create lights in cycles9m 1s
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Lighting a scene in cycles9m 19s
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Conclusion
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Next steps15s
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Video: Facial animation using shape keys