Facial Joints

Week 2

This week, we focused on setting up and placing facial joints ready for weight painting.
The number of joints on a face rig depends on what the animator wants to do, more complex animations will require more joints.

I started by placing joints around the mouth, nose, cheeks, eyebrows and cheeks. In total I had 24 joints.

Next, I had to connect the joints to the head, I had already done this with the mouth joints. 

I had accidentally added the joint influence to the skin of the model rather than connecting the joints to the head, this made the head of the model sink into the torso. While this was quite amusing, it wasn't what I wanted, so I Ctrl+Z to undo this. I had also named the facial joints with appropriate names.

To connect the joints to the head, I was having trouble using Parenting, but I found out that simply selecting all of the facial joints I had just created and then, while holding the Middle Mouse button, drag them under the Head joint in the hierarchy connected the joints exactly how I wanted.