The Making of Gladiator Ometiklan: Rigging

People ask me, is the morph achieved with just Blendshapes? Yes and No! Blendshapes came after the bind joints and rig were completed. I used simple mel expressions to drive the joint scale (TransX). I also used empty group nodes to scale and displace certain parts of Mr. Ometiklan. I preferred expressions because it allowed me to see what was happening on the fly: read, and make a numerical change without plugging anything in or out within the hypershade/hypergraph utilities, and see the morph changes in realtime. When I was satisfied with the scale result of the Overall Size, Height Change, Arm Length Grow, Hand Growth, Finger Nail Morph, Eyes Morph, Teeth Morph, Gums Morph, and Tongue Morph... I then compounded onto the rig the blendshapes necessary to change him from Man to Beast...all with just one slider I call Metamorph! In reality, you can achieve a multitude of morphing character's based on any floating point level from 0 to 10.

The Making of Gladiator Ometiklan: Blendshape Modeling and Facial Rigging

Thirty-four facial blendshapes modeled in Maya. Not many compared to the big studios, but the shapes were targeted to small key areas to compound multiple shapes. Twenty-seven cluster controls are layered on top of the blendshapes to give animators the ability to emote many facial expressions...while morphing at any rate. I used the Hyper-Real Parent Mesh Script for the switchable facial controls (special thanks to Eric Miller). The human displacement maps sculpted in Zbrush. The beast displacement maps sculpted in the beta version of Skymatter Mudbox. Brought together in Maya.