Post 33 - Return of the Max: Face rigging

Now that the Maya rig is finished for the time being, I have decided to go back to 3ds Max and look at rigging a face / head. As I proposed in the Task one proposal, I plan on rigging a a full figure rig (done) and a separate head rig. this will be done using mostly what is known as the morph target system. This is also known as the blend shape method, which is essentially modelling a series of poses, expressions etc and then adding them to the original model using a 'morpher' modifier. 

This then allows the various targets to be morphed or blended into the original giving it a natural transition. As this is just a head mesh, the first stage is to quickly add some bones for the neck, head and a separate jaw bone. As with the first bone based rig, I have constrained the neck and head to spline based manipulators so that they only rotate when the controller is rotated. The jaw has been linked to a helper node, which has been aligned to it (green cube). This will be it's pivoting origin and by parenting the jaw to this helper, it zeros out the transforms. This will help with setting the jaw up as well as making the manipulation clearer to animators (staring from zero rather than a random number).