Animating with Blender

Constructing Shape Controls

For ease of use during animation, the best controls for your shapes are bones within the main control armature for your character. The controls can be visualized as normal bones or represented as custom shapes to ease the animation process even further. Figure 10.27 shows all of the facial controls bones for the Beast. Eye, brow, and nose controls are plain bones, while the mouth controls arrayed above the head use custom bone shapes. How you structure the controls of your character is mostly a matter of personal preference, so we will look at how the Beast’s controls are set up to give you some insight into the process.

Figure 10.27. Both plain and mesh-shaped bones can be used for controllers

Here is the basic ...