Tutorial: Blend Shape Overview in Maya

This is very helpful! Thanks a lot! Wayyy better than face rigging!

Author — AMIRULER

Thank you! for making this video, helped me a bunch. Had some issues with my blends but your vid helped in fixing those issues. Thank you!

Author — kotori dickinson

thank you so much for the tutorial! very helpful! 

Author — Dan Agustin

Hello, I just want to know how do you model a simple character in order to apply blend shapes on it.

Author — M.Y.A.

Very clear and concise explanation. I can't believe I was able to follow along (im terrible at rigging)

Author — xRusty

finally i found the solution to my problem that the shapes weren't moved along my rig. Thanks!

Author — Wubel Hutz

I have a character who is rigged and the head piece is a separate mesh. The head piece has different viseme (phoneotype lip sync animation) applied to it which is basically a whole bunch of blend-shape animation.

I have a whole bunch of characters which I would like to easily transfer these blend-shape animations to but was unsuccessful. I have tried using the connection editor, tried to copy the animation graph from the animated character onto another mesh which basically had the same blendshapes with same namespace and did not work. I don't know if I'm missing out on anything or not doing it properly.

So anyone who can hep me out on how I can achieve this would greatly be appreciated. I don't mind using any script or plugin to get this done.

Why I want to do this is because I have an external program that could make this character animate the lips to recorded voice and export this out as an FBX file which I can then import into maya. I want to use these lip animation on my other models which I have created using maya. So basically if there is a good vioce to lip animation for any character would also be great. I came across voice O matic but the price tag was out of my reach for this project. Anything cheaper, I would have considered fine to purchase.

I hope someone can enlighten me with a good solution for this.

Author — NaaffaX

may i ask some questions? this character's eyebrow have you combine to the body? or just group with the body? if group with the body, is there have problem in rigging??

Author — Ronald Lee

blend shapes demystified! :) Thank you!

Author — Alan Balodi

first off...great vids.
question: its been a little while for me, and I can't for the LIFE of me remember how to do the following...., it was either use one object to select another, or offset an objects pivot to be able to rotate something that is hidden with a character but not have the original object rotate.basically use an object to select another object or affect an object that would not be easily accessible. and I don't want to use attributes to do that. I would prefer, in this case, to have the transform control...its more fluid to do what id like to do. thanks in advance.

Author — TRaddcliff

Very nice tutorial, tnx for sharing ! :)

Author — Toparak

hey man I am kinda new in these maya's stuffs and I'd like to know if it is possible to mix a cene with a rigged body with blend shape expressions

Author — hickupscurespookie

so i got this working, just want to say thanks for posting this helped out alot. but im curious, how do you add more? like to make a frown or blink. i only got it to work for a frown and a smile on the translate x and y axis. but say i wanted to add a blink to it, i cant really use z axis.

Author — Joseph Lane

thankyou very much sir it was the video that i was looking for solved all of my problems..

Author — M Nabeel Aslam

Perfect Friend. Perfect. Im using it on game dev, and it was too helpful

Author — Felipe Borba

Hi sir,



I am having an issue with creating blendshapes. I always get "no deformable object selected."

Any advice?

Thanks

Author — I am Groot

Now, what if the head is attached to the rest of the body so that everything is just 1 mesh? Can you still do facial blendshapes?

Author — RespectedGamer72

Hi, i got a problem about bland shape . They disappeared when i set drive key or fix the models, please help me, thanks~~~by the way, i got the same problem about clusters disappeared sometimes.

Author — wang shengwen

front of chain is now called pre-deformation

Author — Cornelius Bogfrollup Fitzgerald

may i ask.. does blendshape needed to be rigging the whole body first? or if i already rig the body, can i do the blendshape after?

Author — 96Lady