Blog Progress Update Week 7

In this weeks blog progress update i discuss what my start of Blendshape animation and what that means. So this week is the start of my next 3 week project in Self directed of which the topic is blendshape animation a topic that wasn't covered what so ever in classes and something that seems pretty important if I'm going to be a 3D animator in the future. So basically what Blendshape animation is about is the blending of one shape to another and, back again. This is used in animation by creating the basic face structures that a person makes and blending them together to give characters expressions and such. I'm hoping to cover this at least a little bit during this 3 week time even though i realize that I'm definitely not going to be able to cover all of it in that time. As such this week i found some reference pictures for a head front and side and began modeling. If I find i don't have enough time I'm likely going to just find a completed head and use it for expressions rather than create a new one from scratch.

Beyond the start of this i've also watched a couple of YouTube videos on Blendshape animation and will be looking into getting some books from my instructor on the topic this week so I can really figure out how to do this well. My biggest concern isn't the animation but time, since we are quickly running out of time left in the semester for creating assets and side projects like this take up a lot of the time I'd be using for other things. However i realize that animation projects are very important and expect to put in a fair bit of time on this one compared to my last project.