help animating expressions with genesis

Sonofbelmont

Hi
how do I animate Genesis's face in Carrara 8.5?
for example I've created a simple head turn and I would like to have the eyes blink during It.

any help is appreciated
thanks

3DAGE

Hi :)

Facial animation is done using morphs found in the "Head" section of the figure.

So,. to make your figure blink,. you would set three key-frames,. one with the eyes in a "normal" open position,. one with the eyes closed, and one with the eyes open again.

blinks are normally pretty fast,. around 1/16th of a second,. so your keys will be close together, and separated by only two or three frames between each key.

Once you have the key-frames for the "Blink",. you should be able to select and copy them further along the time-line,
using ALT+click 'n' Drag

You could also make that single blink animation into an NLA clip, so it can be placed anywhere you need the figure to blink, and could be looped to have a repeating blink. and could be saved to your Clips in the browser,.. for use in other projects.

when you're dealing with facial morphs, it's important to create frames where there is a "normal" frame,. (unmorphed) before you have the key-frames for the morph expression,.

For example,. if I close the eyes of my figure at 3 seconds,. and play it back,. then the motion will start from frame 0 and the eyes will slowly close until 3 seconds, and remain closed.

Hope it helps :)