Facial Rigging 101 - Maya 2020

Detail how to build a facial landscape system in Maya 2020, covering topology notes, head variations, and steps to create expressions and connect features into a cohesive face.

Master facial topology by understanding poles, edge flow, and tension to define features, while distributing polygons to avoid pinches around the nose, eyes, and mouth.

Explore how the blendshape deformer in Maya creates expressive facial movement by sculpting targets, using interpolation, envelopes, and master controls to deform the original face.

Explore deformation order in Maya rigs, learning how input order determines shaping before skin, placing the shape node under the skin cluster, and adjusting with inputs to control blend shapes.

Break down the face into movable regions, plan essential expressions and vowel shapes, and set up separate joints for eyebrows, lips, jaw, cheeks, and nose.

Explore eyebrow movements and references, then craft and test an eyebrow rig in Maya 2020 using sculpting, the graph tool, and smooth modes to preserve natural shape and shading.

Adjust eyebrow shape in Maya through sculpting, masking, and reference mode to preserve volume, then refine with relax brush and template mode for believable brow movement.

Learn to craft angry eyebrow expressions in Maya 2020 by moving, constraining, and exaggerating brow shapes, while checking from every angle to avoid interpenetration.

Learn eyebrow rigging in Maya by creating and adjusting eyebrow shapes with targets, constraining to surfaces, testing expressions, and adding new targets for varied, realistic expressions.

Rig the eyes in Maya by creating a joint centered on the eye sphere, adding a transparent cornea, and skinning the eyes to enable coordinated movement.

Create and rig eye controls in Maya by building left and right eye controllers, pivots, and aim constraints, then establish a master control with a steady aim attribute.

Learn two efficient methods to rig blink eyelids in Maya 2020, including duplicating meshes, weight painting, and flipping targets for independent left and right eyelids.

Explore practical eyelid rigging in Maya 2020 by sculpting on emotes, adjusting upper and lower lids with the graph tool to prevent penetration, and testing blinks from multiple angles.

Explore lip rigging with upper and lower lip separation, corner movements, and outward, inward, up, and down motions, while coordinating cheek and nose deformation for expressive speech.

Explore lip corner out and in rigging in Maya 2020 by creating joint-driven lip movement, painting weights, duplicating geometry, and sculpting folds to achieve exaggerated, natural lip motion.

Learn to sculpt lip corners to move out and in, check from every angle, adjust volume and creases with sculpting tools, and seek team feedback to refine topology.

Sculpt the lip corner for a natural smile by adjusting the zygomatic major puller, cheek folds, and inner mouth contours. Refine into a controlled frown with creases across angles.

Develop a jaw rig in Maya 2020 by building a joint system, painting skin weights, and using dual controllers to open the jaw and refine lip movement.

Learn to build and test a lip rig in Maya 2020 by combining joint systems and blend shapes, testing with the shape editor, mirroring targets, and painting skin weights.

Learn to refine the lips in maya 2020 by reskinning to the original shape, duplicating and sculpting for accurate upper and lower lip anatomy, and balancing corner volume.

Master lips-out rigging in Maya 2020 by shaping, weighting, and mirroring lips, refining curves, and adjusting joints to achieve a clean, expressive mouth opening.

Master Maya 2020 lip rigging by weighting upper and lower lips, shaping lip corners, and adjusting nose and nostril influence for expressive up-down mouth motion.

Divides the facial rig into three joint-based systems: an ear-focused system, an eyebrow system with corrective exaggerations, and a third system for remaining features, using duplicates and controllers.

Build system a nose and ears rig in Maya 2020, placing base to tip joints, pivots, and controls, with mirrored constraints for accurate skinning.

Apply skinning to facial features in Maya 2020 by weighting joints, painting weights for the nose and nostrils, using pivot-based selection, and mirroring weights to create smooth, natural nose deformation.

Build a system B eyebrow rig with curve-driven joints. Convert polygon edges to curves, delete history, and use point-on-curve and world-space inputs for natural eyebrow motion.

Learn to build a flexible facial rig by placing pivots, mirroring joints, applying skin weights, and constraining controls to drive eyebrows, mouth, and facial features.

Create a simple facial rig in Maya by placing pivots on key jaw and tongue areas, aligning them with controllers, and parenting pivots to the jaw system.

Rig the upper teeth with a lattice deformer, using a four-part lattice to deform sections and separate gums from teeth. Set up joints and pivots, mirror, and weights for deformation.

Apply fast lower tier rigging in Maya by duplicating constraints, naming schemes, creating pivots, and constraining lattice skins with weight painting to achieve mirrored, stable lower teeth motion.

This lecture guides Maya tongue rigging from base joints to the tip, using pivots, hierarchical constraints, skinning, and weight painting for natural tongue deformations.

Develop a functional facial rig by copying controller rotations from the jaw system to the main pivot, then clean and group the scene for a modular joint-based rig.

Create user-friendly facial rig controllers in Maya 2020 by building a main panel that drives the mouth, eyebrows, and nose, with optional face attachments and panels for other features.

Build a mouth rig in Maya 2020 by constructing a mouth container with controlled jaw movement, setting translation limits, and integrating lip-sync controllers for realistic facial animation.

Teach lip-sync rigging in Maya by duplicating targets for left, right, and both. Then drive jaw and lips with graph editor and set range nodes for smooth open and close.

Learn to build a dual-controller facial rig in Maya by painting under the controls, adjusting limits, and refining the mouth corners for smooth smile and frown transitions.

Create left and right mouth corner controllers in Maya 2020, mirror them, and connect translation on X and Y to drive smile and frown with weights.

Add four 0-1 lip attributes: upper lip in, upper lip out, lower lip in, and lower lip out. Then connect them to the lip controller to drive lip in/out.

Design eyebrow controls by combining joint and blend shape logic, creating left and right eyebrow controllers, neutral and adjustment rigs, and mirroring for symmetry.

Connect and rig eyebrows in Maya 2020 using left-right blend shapes, set range controls, and controller-driven deformations to achieve smooth, symmetric eyebrow movements.

Build eyebrow adjustment controllers in Maya by linking panel and joint rigs with direct connections and intermediate nodes to fine-tune translation, rotation, and scale, with left-right symmetry and visibility controls.

Create nose controls in Maya 2020 by building panel-based controllers and containers, linking left and right nostrils to a shared nose rig with translation, scale limits, and rotation constraints.

Build a Maya 2020 nose base rig with yellow base control driving the whole nose and blue tip control driving the tip, using set range and a conditional node.

Create a Maya ear rig by building left and right ear controllers, aligning to neutral pivots, duplicating for symmetry, and applying scale limits and visibility to enable animation.

Learn to build a teeth rig in Maya 2020 by creating upper and lower controls. Add left, right, and neutral parts, and connect translations with multiply/divide constraints.

Master tongue rigging in Maya 2020 by building a five-piece tongue with neutral controllers, pivots, and a manager controlled by a mouth base controller, including attribute connections and translation limits.

Apply corrective shapes to fix wide smiles and frowns, and adjust eyebrows inward and upward to prevent undesired deformation when the mouth opens.

Learn how to create and use combination targets to build a corrective smile in Maya 2020, adjusting left and right lip corners with duplication, flipping, and targeted smoothing.

Learn to correct eyebrows in Maya 2020 by identifying problem shapes, sculpting vertex adjustments on left and right sides, and creating combination targets to drive expressions.

Learn Maya 2020 facial rigging by creating lip controllers, linking them to the main head rig, and adding blink controls for expressive, reusable facial animation.

Clean up your Maya scene by grouping, renaming, and linking controllers, then add and test corrective shapes for eyelids, finalize rig, and save a clean, reusable facial rig.

Conduct a quick test of facial rigging in Maya 2020, creating surprised, angry, and sad expressions by adjusting eyes and mouth shapes.

Thank you for completing the facial rigging 101 course; I hope it was useful and you learned techniques, and please share with others and leave feedback for digital art school.