How to blendshape/morph a neutral basemesh to a smiling one with teeth

Sanderdiels · May 8, 2018, 1:13pm

Hi all,

Just started using this software and very happy with what it could do.
I am working on animating about 10 different facial scans to get a talking animation going, which I Mudbox and 3DS Max for after Wrap 3.

I am hoping to learn how you tackle the transition between the neutral basemesh that has been opticalflow-wrapped toward an expression with teeth showing, or closed eyes for example.

For now I do carefully change the shape of the inner mouth to show teeth in 3D by maintaining the same geometry as the basemesh.
Also I have colored the inner part of the mouth white so that when it morphes to a facial expression with teeth showing I can get the color “change” as well.

I do realise this may not be the best way quality wise to do so I was wondering how you guys tackle this issue.
I didn’t really find information about this in the tutorials so maybe I’m missing something.

Do you guys make custom eyeballs and teeth which are positioned inside the scanned face or how would you suggest me to go forward?
Is there a way to do the morphing in Wrap 3 fully?

Sorry if the questions sound a bit silly but I’m not so experienced in facial animation.

Thank you,
Sander

Neo307 · May 8, 2018, 6:48pm

Hi Sander,

I think the best practice is to prepare blendshapes in Wrap (without teeth and eyeballs) and then use software like Maya or 3DsMax to combine the blendshapes into a rig and attach teeth and eyeballs to it. The purpose why we added Blendshapes node was to be able to quickly check if models and textures blends correctly.

Hope that helps.