Blendshapes!

So I’ve heard so much about Maya’s Blendshapes animation deformer, but never actually tried it out before. Tonight I made a model in Zbrush, saved 3 facial “states” (static, pleased and amazed) and exported them as .obj’s, which I opened in Maya and put together using blend shapes. Not only can you seamlessly morph a chunk of polygons from one state to another, but you can even combine states! Here’s the result.
blendshapesstatic

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Art Advice: Scanning and mending large art

Scanners. They’re our amazing link between the traditional and digital world. Yet, we have a slight issue when we’ve created a piece that’s just a little too large to scan in. Should you scan in just a portion and leave that to your digital workings? It would most certainly be nice to get a full-detail version into Photoshop with 300dpi, though…. and digitally photographing artwork often ends with blurry, washed-out results. Never fear! I now bring to you the ultimate scanning and mending tutorial.

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