Blend Network Facial Rig

The Blend network tool makes maya transform nodes behave like blend shapes.

It creates a network of blendweighted nodes that drive the transforms of any transform node, such as a bone. The blend values are controlled by a dummy transform node with a float attribute for each desired blend transform. The network can drive the position, rotation, and scale attributes.

I wrote a tool to set all of this up. It's used to create, save, and load blend networks.

After adding the transform nodes to the list and entering a list of blend names, the tool builds the network. Once a network is set up, the tool allows you to edit blend transforms, or add new bend transforms.

 

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Here is a short video of the tool in use

The transform blend node was then attached to a facial rig for animation. A short video of this settup is here.

All this is possible with setdriven keys, however, this process is simpler and more direct. The blendWeighted node is used by the set driven system to blend the multiple curve inputs.

Here's a smaple Maya file using some polygon boxes set up with a blend network. Right click save target.

Can it work with Mocap?

All facial Mocap at EA is bone driven. This is a huge limitation and a nucience for animators as it forces them to animate directly on the facial bones.

Here is a video of bone driven facial Mocap being retargeted to a blend network facial rig. The head on the left is the original bone driven mocap. The head on the right is the blendnetwork head.

These are a few quick movies of more complete setups. These are just binding tests to make sure the rig is working as planned.