Use blend shapes to set up a basic facial animation rig for your character from assignment 5 (you can create a new head model if you prefer). Model blend shapes for the six emotions that Ekman and Friesen identified as being universally recognized through facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and create a short clip that shows transitions between each of them. There is no need to tell a story in this animation, although you are welcome to. Focus on the quality of the modeling and timing of the motion in order to strongly communicate each emotion.
This assignment builds on the work you did for Assignment 5. You will add controls to the character model you made for that assignment to allow the face to be animated. (If you prefer, you may also create a new head model from scratch.) The animation controls will be based on “blend shapes”. Blend shapes work by averaging multiple variations of a mesh in order to determine the final vertex locations. For instance, you can create a mesh with a neutral expression and a mesh with a happy expression. Blending between these two meshes will allow you to control how happy the character appears. (In practice, people will often create meshes related to muscle movement, such as meshes that raise the left corner of mouth, raise the right corner of mouth, raise an eyebrow, etc. and then combine these to generate expressions.)
The psychologist Paul Ekman studied the question of whether there are facial expressions that are universally recognized across all cultures as corresponding to particular emotions. He did studies, particularly in Papua New Guinea, and discovered six universally recognizable emotions based on their corresponding facial expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise (Ekman sometimes divides disgust into “disgust” and “contempt” to yield seven basic emotions). Ekman and Friesen’s research remains controversial, but mastering these six expressions will nonetheless provide you with a good grounding in facial animation.
For this assignment, you must:
The basic submission procedure is the same as for all assignments.
- You will be submitting your entire Maya project folder. All additional files (e.g. the readme.txt and image files) should be in the root of that folder.
- N.B. Name your project folder as “A6YourName”, where “YourName” is your first and last name. This is how we will identify your submission.
- Include a brief readme file that identifies how you have met each of the requirements. You can also include any problems you could not resolve or particular features you would like us to notice. The file should be called “readme.txt” and included in the main project directory of your Maya files. Include your full name and student number in this file. This file should be brief (< 1 page).
- Be sure to include all the rendered images and movie listed above!
- Drop your project folder into the submissions folder as per the instructions below.
1. The "classes folder” is located in the lower right when you log into a computer in the lab. Double click on this.
2. Open "Neff CDM 130", then “drop off” and then “A6”.
3. Drag and drop your assignment into that folder. Make sure it is named correctly, as described above.