Last month, I have completed facial rigging workshop at iAnimate, instructed by Jonah Austin. Currently, Jonah is working as Sr. Animator at Activision but previously, he also worked on facial animations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tron and Beowulf. I had the opportunity to develop my skills and gain professional insight into technical aspects of building a robust facial rigging. Above, you can see the final result of the workshop. I have implemented all the features we learned throughout the workshop and this quick animation pass test demonstrates how blendshape interpolation works and depicts the capabilities of joint movement.
The workshop covered joint setup, FACS system, skinning process, soft eye system, creating blendshapes, phonemes and vizemes for lip-synch, automating process (MEL and Python tips such as mirroring blendshapes) and creating UI controls to drive the blendshapes and joints. You can read the details about workshops here. If you have any questions, I would gladly reply. Leave a comment below or reach me out.