This week we came to try out hand at animating the faces we had constructed over the last few weeks. We were told to get a short clip and I took one from Dune. Specifically from 1:17-1:21 when Thufir gives an estimate of how much the space travel costs them.
Learning to use the animation tools alongside the blend shapes to create the mouth shapes was pretty difficult. The biggest issue was with Maya itself as it often would shift the heat, not display my changes or would show a different key frame after adjustments were made. This made working on these blend shapes very difficult as I would constantly have to stop to correct Maya.
While the mouth movements have gotten quite far along I will have to go back to add movement to other key areas of the face like the cheeks to add more realism to the animations. Skin is attached to the entire face so when one part shifts so does all the immediate areas especially around the cheeks.
Overall my biggest challenges this week were handling Maya’s unique issues and keeping track of what blend shapes I was editing and which keyframes were being adjusted.