I am excited to announce that my second Gnomon tutorial has just been released. This next one is part two in the series focusing on creating blendshapes from photogrammetry data.

Blendshapes and photogrammetry data are two very important elements when creating realistic human facial rigs in 3D. This tutorial covers all the essential aspects of capturing FACS scans and processing the data into isolated blendshapes. It also looks at how blendshapes can be used within a FACS based facial rig.

In this tutorial, you will explore how to capture scanned facial expressions and process that data into isolated blendshapes. You will learn how these facial shapes can be used to create a FACS-based facial rig, and will take a look at integrating expression texture maps into a facial rig, which will be dynamically driven by the isolated facial shapes.

I begins the tutorial by covering how to capture and process multiple FACS scans with a single camera. For this exercise, I use a DSLR and process the data in Agisoft Metashape. The focus then shifts to wrapping and cleaning up the scan data before moving onto the final stage of the workshop: Creating a Blendshape Rig & Dynamic Shader in Maya. During this chapter I focus on how to integrate the FACS scans into a facial rig, by isolating different areas of the scans in ZBrush to create multiple blendshapes that can then be imported into Maya. I then demonstrate the fundamentals of blendshape rigging and explore a simple approach to linking dynamically driven skin textures to achieve even more realism.

This workshop aims to teach all the necessary skills you need to create FACS-based blendshapes that can be used in any facial rig for either a games or visual effects pipeline.

Here is a link to the tutorial on the Gnomon Workshop website – click here.

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Chapters

1. FACS & Photogrammetry Theory
2. Preprocessing Images in Lightroom
3. Batch Processing Scan Data in Agisoft Metashape
4. Cleanup Prep in Wrap
5. Rigid Alignment in Maya
6. Neutral Cleanup Summary
7. Optical Flow in Wrap
8. Cleanup & Reprojection in ZBrush – Part1
9. Cleanup & Reprojection in ZBrush – Part2
10. Texture Transfer in Wrap
11. Texture Cleanup in Photoshop
12. Highpass Displacement in ZBrush
13. Creating a Blendshape Rig & Dynamic Shader in Maya

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Software

• Lightroom
• Metashape
• Zbrush
• Wrap
• Photoshop
• Maya

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Tags: , 3D, 3D Portrait, 3D Scanning, Agisoft, Animation, Arnold, Blendshapes, Digital Double, Facial Modelling, Mari, Maya, Modeling, Photogrammetry, Photoscan, Portraiture, Zbrush