Blogpost 3: Week 1 - Exercise 2A - Cluster and Blend Shape Deformers

In this exercise, I'm given a link from Maya website: "http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/Maya2012_Getting_Started/index.html", and follow the clear tutorials given to create cluster and blend shape deformers.

Maya Tutorial Explanations:

Cluster Deformers enable you to control a set of an object's points (CVs, vertices, or lattice points) with varying amounts of influence to create a target shape for an animation.

A Blend Shape deformer provides an interface for blending between various target shapes, to control the range of movement for the cluster on an object or face.

First, creating a smiling face with the given model. Before starting to select the vertices of the face, we have to understand which parts of the muscle in the face must be changed to create a sweet smiling face. Cheek muscles are usually contracted to produce a smile. Entering into vertices mode of the object, by using the Paint Selection Tool, I was able to select the cheek and parts below the nose without much difficulty. Then, creating Cluster from Create Deformers > Cluster allowed me to create a control for the selected vertices to be moved.

The cheeks are slightly raised to show a smiling face.

Then, choosing Edit Deformers > Paint Cluster Weights Tool, allows the smiling face grayscale to be seen. Looking into the Paint Attributes, changing the [Paint Operation:Replace] and [Value: 0.5]. Click onto Flood. This gives all selected vertices to be given a weight of 0.5. Furthermore, Paint Cluster Weight Tool helps to select some parts of the cheeks to be given more weight, to create a more realistic animation when the model smiles.

Next, look into Window > Animation Editors > Blend Shape. This displays the Blend Shape editor, which has a slider for changing the base into the target shape, and buttons for setting keys. This allows the model to be moved by dragging the slider, giving more or less weight to the cheeks.

Using the Blend Shape editor to move the cheeks more accurately.

With these tutorials, I was able to create a smiling face and a frowning face, by using the same exact tools taught and used previously. However, I wasn't really satisfied with it because it didn't really show the facial expressions that well and clearly. In the next exercise/blogpost, I would upload a better model done, by selecting not just the cheek and forehead muscles to create a frowning and smiling face. 

Result of the entire exercise. A better version will be uploaded in the next blogpost.

P.S. Sorry about the white background text found at parts of the blogpost. I'm not sure why this happens, but it does from time to time on Blogger.