In this week’s Maya Class, i have studied how to use rigging joints and skin to animate some face actions in Maya. I have used what i have learnt in class to let my character make some expressions such as smile, angry, shocked etc.

Before I start to do these expressions, I have done some research on the actual human faces expressions, and I have tried to follow these expressions and these muscles’ shapes when I did my character’s expressions. Also, during the work, I have looked in a mirror and tried to do the same expression by myself such as shocking, angry, happy, etc.

It is very interesting and useful that you did these expressions while making your character’s facial expressions because you have to know which muscle is moving and how what else is a connection when to make this facial expression.

The hardest expression from these will be kissing, it’s hard to let two lips scale down and if you try to do a kiss expression, you will realize that there is not only your lips move, but also your nose, the side of your face and your eyes will be effect at the same time, so to let my kiss expression worked, I also need to control my nose and my eyes.

The problem that I have during creating these expressions is the skin weight and parent tool. Because of the wrong joint that I have to connect to my character, I cannot let my character open the mouth when I do skin weight. Also, the parent object is a bit complicated and I have to figure out how it works.