Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Creating the Face Rig

There are a lot of ways to create the facial rig. Controllers let you manipulate expressions right from the 3D View, so you won’t have to adjust the shape keys one by one in the Shapes panel.

Depending on how you want to control your character’s expressions, you’ll need different types of controls. In this case, let’s make a few bones in front of the face and each one of them will control a few shape keys. As an example, take the controller for the mouth: you will set it up so that when it’s scaled up, the mouth opens. The controllers for the eyebrows will control how the eyebrows lift when you change their position.

You have to setup the rig in an intuitive manner (later you’ll add custom shapes that will make them even ...