Creating Facial Blendshapes Using Photogrammetry

FACS Pipeline using Lightroom, Metashape, Wrap, Maya, ZBrush & Photoshop with Adam Spring

Blendshapes and photogrammetry data are two very important elements when creating realistic human facial rigs in 3D. Instructor Adam Spring, Facial Modeler at Blur Studio, covers all the essential aspects of capturing FACS scans and processing the data into isolated blendshapes. He then looks at how these blendshapes can be used within a FACS based facial rig.

In this tutorial, you will explore how to capture scanned facial expressions and process that data into isolated blendshapes. You will learn how these facial shapes can be used to create a FACS-based facial rig, and will take a look at integrating expression texture maps into a facial rig, which will be dynamically driven by the isolated facial shapes.

Adam begins by covering how to capture and process multiple FACS scans with a single camera. For this exercise, he uses a DSLR and processes the data in Agisoft Metashape. The focus then shifts to wrapping and cleaning up the scan data before moving onto the final stage of the workshop: Creating a Blendshape Rig & Dynamic Shader in Maya. During this chapter he focuses on how to integrate the FACS scans into a facial rig, by isolating different areas of the scans in ZBrush to create multiple blendshapes that can then be imported into Maya. He then demonstrates the fundamentals of blendshape rigging and explores a simple approach to linking dynamically driven skin textures to achieve even more realism.

This workshop aims to teach all the necessary skills you need to create FACS-based blendshapes that can be used in any facial rig for either a games or visual effects pipeline.