Using the Morph Modifier for facial animation

1 - Highlight the face that you have modelled. Right click on the mesh and select clone.

2 - Clone as a copy and move the cloned face to the left of the original face. Label this copy as the expression you wish it to have i.e. "Smile". In order for the morph modifier to work, you need to make sure that this is a complete copy, do not add or delete any vertices or faces as the morpher will not work.

3 - On your copy change the expression of either the eyes or the mouth. If you try to do too much to the model the morpher cannot cope with it.

4 - Pick the mesh of the original face. Pick the morpher modifier from the modifier list.

5 - In the Channel list left click on an empty channel. A small box will appear saying pick from scene. Pick the face that you have changed. The panel will now have a green box next to it to show that the morph has worked.

6 - Now make another copy and change the facial expression. You can morph up to 30 different expressions and load them into the panel.

Making Eyes

Making Eyes

Make a sphere – add a texture to it.

Blinn – map into the diffuse channel – eye bitmap – Show map in viewport. Use UVW mapping . Planar map, make the iris quite large.

The pupil has a fixed size.

Eye with dilated pupil.

Make a sphere. Use the hemisphere option on the sphere. Rotate the sphere so that you can see the hemisphere. Can make the flat spot into a pupil.

Create Multi – subobject material.

First mat – black

Second – White. Then you can animate the hemisphere to dilate.

Eye with separate pupil.

Create sphere. Create material for it, which is the eyeball colour – white.

Material for the pupil

Take sphere – edit clone as a copy. Increase the radius slightly. Apply the black texture to it. Dial down the hemisphere and you have a pupil which moves. To move – rotate across the eye. Select and link the pupil to the main eyeball.

Then just copy the eye and produce different texture map. One with just the iris on it – with no pupil

Rigging the eyes

Create a target for the eye in the left viewport – point object. Select the pupils and create look at constraint which is a controller for rotation. Go to the motion panel, and in the Assign Controller rollout highlight rotation. There is a small box below the Assign Controller label, which has a ? on it. Click on this and pick Look at Constraint – OK. Scroll down the motion panel until you get to the Look at Constraint section, click on “Look at Target”. Now pick the eye and a line will link it with the point helper. You may find that the pupil jumps to a different place. This is because it is on the wrong axis. Scroll down to “Select Look At Axis” to correct this.

Now the eye follows the target.

You can link the object to the master bone.

Create a slider to allow to dilate the pupils.

Use slider option – helpers – Manipulators – slider – label the slider.

Wire parameters. Select the wire parameter of the slider to affect the pupil. L pupil is controlled by the slider. Connect.

Can change the max min of the slider between 0 and 1.