Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right, Third Edition

Chapter 1. Learning the Basics of Lip Sync

In modeling for facial animation, mix and match is the name of the game. Instead of building individual specialized shapes for every phoneme and expression, like for an F or a T, we'll build shapes that are broader in their application, like wide or narrow, and use combinations of them to create all those other specialized shapes. On the animation front, it's all about efficiency. You want to spend your time being creative and animating, not fighting with the complexities that often emerge from having a face with great range. It doesn't sound like there's much to these concepts for modeling and animating, and, yeah, they really are small and simple—but they're huge in their details, so let's get into ...