So I actually got some sleep last night; 6 hours after watching Hitch, which was actually a pretty good chick flick. Feeling really good today which is good seeing that I somehow screwed up on half of my blandshapes last night and now the lips on my Alien are kind of floating all over the place. But that’s all right, you know why? Because the Cluster makes it all so easy, and really works a lot like the face does in reality.

You see what I am doing is selecting a bunch of verts around the region that I am trying to deform and then I start painting away. I caught on the whole painting thing without a problem, it was quite easy. I think all my Photoshop experience helps here. The easiest way I found to work is to flood the whole area with a zero value after moving the cluster to where I think I want it, then set it all the way up to one and set transparency to about a quarter to half. Then start painting with replace. The model usually get a little messy, but no biggie, set transparency to about 50% and start smoothing the whole thing out (I seldomly use the flood) and BAM! Instant expression. I was doing them in about 5 to 10 minutes by the time I finished last night..

But like I said I screwed up. I think I started to duplicate the wrong model about half way through last night, because half of my blend targets seem to have their lips float around the screen. Oh well, its all practice at this point and I will only get better. :)

PS, installed Hello last night, so there should be some pick of my Alien up tonight. :)

Lessons Learned:

When making Blendshape targets, duplicate the model to a completely different location on the screen to make sure that you don’t inadvertently duplicate the wrong mesh.