Pipeline 1: Jetpack Jones - Flexible Mouth Rig Pt 1

 Turning off the skin cluster for the head, a duplicate was made to make the mouth rig. We have to make sure the duplicate has no abnormalities as they will become a permeant problem for the blend shapes.

The new head is then moves up 8 in the translate y axis. 

Duplicated head

  Making another duplicate, they are both removed from the parenting chain and one renamed as Mouth_BS_Target_Geo. This is then removed from the view port onto a layer and the newer version moved into it place. 

  Making a selection of two strips of faces in the lips, the rest of the head mesh is deleted. The inner row of faces and the corner is also removed and colours assigned so we know which part is which.

  Renaming them as Upper/Lower_Ribbon_geo and assigning them to layers, some of the edges are removed from the geometry, leaving us with 3 edges on each side. The edges need to be identical on each side. However, there maybe a slight difference on mine.

Ribbon Geo's

  Placing them into a group (Ribbon_Grp) and laying out the UV's, follicles (nHair) was added to each face of the lip geometry. Everything apart from the follicles was removed. Each follicle is named as Fol_L/R/C_Upper/Lower_Ribbon_0X depending on it place.

  At this point, Maya kept crashing on me when I used the hair system. Asking online in the Autodesk help, a solution came by changing the animation from Parrell to DG in the animation tab would stop this(under setting was needed).

Follicles

  After the follicles are done, some bind and control joints was added, Bind joints being placed under the follicles (making parent groups). With the bind joints in, the follicles was removed from the viewport so to reduce clutter.

  Following this, some Control joints was placed (which are larger and coloured Yellow). These was placed onto edges rather then the bind joints, using C to snap them the right place.

Bind and Control Joints

  Applying the corner joints was quite fiddly, which was likely down to how tight and overlapped my geometry is. I know for next time to not have the mouth so overlapped. Once the joints on the left side are set, they was renamed and then mirrored across the the right so to be be in the exact same position.

These joints are then placed into groups: the corners, upper and lower. Then, placed into a overall groups called Ribbon _Jnt_Ctrl_Grp.

Each control joint is then placed into it own group and the pivot placed onto the joint. 

Removing the lower lips via the show option in the view point, the geometry was then bound to the joints (selected joints). Placing animation on all of the groups, the weights was then painted with the paint weight tool.

Blending the Weights

The weights was then blended out to give a smoother transaction when being moved. Once the top lip is done, this is then repeated for lower lip.

Finished Ribbon So Far