Short of the time required to do it, adjusting the weight of vertex influences for each bone went down rather painlessly. I was expecting to need to readjust some of the mesh to play more nicely with the bones to make the deformation around, say, elbows and joints operate with less distortion. But it all just kind of worked, and the suspenders even rest/stretch as they ought to!
I could have spent a few more hours creating another rig just for the face, but I opted to just control it with shape keys. Shape keys let you move vertices around all you like for things like eyelids blinking, mouth shape stretching and squashing to form lipsynching cues, etc, then transition between the keys you created and the default pose that was in place. For example, my face had shape keys to open and close the eyes, open and close the mouth, raise and lower the teeth/cheeks for smiling and such, and lift or lower each eyebrow separately. Was a fun process to learn and use! Continue reading »
