How to simplify blend shape creation in Maya

Maya
(Image credit: Antony Ward)

In Maya, blend shapes, or morph targets as they are also known, are a powerful way to bring life to a static model. You create a target shape and then your model can blend into and out of this using a slider, so it’s a nice organic motion, even if it is a linear movement.

Traditionally, creating blend shapes could be a long and tedious job, but there have been lots of improvements in blend shape creation over the years and some shortcuts have been developed to help speed up generation and prevent the need for any work to be repeated. Let's explore how you can use a mixture of Maya's new tools and methods to quickly and efficiently create blend shapes.

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Antony Ward

Since the early 90s, Antony has worked for many of today’s top game and VFX studios. He has written three technical manuals on Game Character Development in Maya, Game Character Development and 3D Modeling in Silo, all of which have been translated into multiple languages. He is the owner of antcgi.com, and regularly produces both written and video tutorials on technical aspects of game development and VFX.