Tuesday 13 March 2012

Morpher Tool

This tutorial showed me how to animate a human face using the morpher tool.

I imported the 'head.obj' and changed it to an editable poly. I then copied the head 3 times, naming each of them a diiferent expression: open mouth, closed eyes, raised eyebrows.

I then selected the the mouth of the the 'open mouth' head. I selected the two front lip polygons and used the grow tool select more of them. When the jaw area was selected I could move it downwards creating a open mouth.


Then I created the closed eyes by selecting the underneath polygons of the eye lids and moved them downwards.

Lastly I selected the 'raised eyebrows' head and selected each eye brow area. Then by moving them upwards I created the raised eyebrow effect.

With all targets now having an expression, I can select the original head and select the morpher modifier. On the menu on the right I right-clicked on the 'empty' and chose pick from scene. Then I could choose either one of the other expressions. I can repeat the process for the other expressions. I then was able to move the slider up and down and this affected the original head with all the expressions.


I then could TurboSmooth the original head to give it a more life-like look.

I then used the auto key to create the animation to show the expressions changing. At each keyframe I moved the slider to change the face.


I could then open the curve editor to individually change the animation of an expression.

This was a very fun tool to use and would be very useful for character design.


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