Mastering Maya® 2009

Chapter 6. Animating with Deformers

Deformers can be used for both modeling and animation and as part of an animation rig. In this chapter, you'll see some of the ways to animate geometry using deformers. From creating facial expressions to animating a jellyfish, there are thousands of ways you can apply deformers to bring your creations to life.

In this chapter you will learn to:

• Animate facial expressions

• Create Blend Shape sequences

• Use lattices

• Animate clusters

• Animate nonlinear deformers

• Use jiggle deformers

• Use the geometry cache

Animate Facial Expressions

Animating facial expressions for characters is usually accomplished through the use of Blend Shapes. While this is not the only way to animate expressions and speech, it is the most common because ...