With detailed examples, high-quality professional images, and a touch of humor, this is the fully revised and updated second edition of Jason Osipa's best-selling book on facial animation. You'll learn the basics of design, modeling, rigging, and animation—while mastering exciting new techniques for stretch-and-squash deformation, advanced blend extraction, and the latest software tools. Walk through the author's detailed analysis of sample animations and discover how to add nuance and sophistication to your designs.

Full of insights drawn from years of professional experience, this book provides the focused and practical information you need to create believable facial animations.

• Learn visimes and lip sync techniques

• Construct a mouth and mouth keys

• Explore the process of facial landmarking

• Master the cartoon techniques of squash and stretch

• Harness the latest advanced blend extraction tools

• Create interfaces for your faces

• Understand skeletal setup, weighting, and rigging

Control faces with the book's powerful rig and learn how skin moves to make various shapes and expressions

Master powerful stretch-and-squash (and squoosh!) techniques

Featured on the CD

Fine-tune your facial animations with the techniques demonstrated on the companion CD. Content includes tutorial files, lip sync samples, models, textures, and more.

About the Author

Jason Osipa is currently directing in San Francisco at LucasArts, where he also works with sister company ILM on new ways to converge the tools and techniques of games and film. He has been a working professional in 3D content for over 10 years, touching television, games, direct-to-video, and film in both Canada and the United States. Carrying titles from author to modeler to animator to technical director, Jason has seen and experienced the world of 3D content creation and instruction from all sides.