Facial Animation/Lip-Synch Skills Facial animation/lip-synch R&D Rig creation Character weighting Facial animation/lip-synch animation Automation: expressions and driven keys Developed For N64 Programs Used Maya While in the Cinematics department my primary focus was facial animation and lip-synching, both for high resolution and low poly in-game models. At the time, lip-synching was a great way to show off technological prowess and to this day I am fascinated by the nuances of the human face. I achieved the desired results for high resolution models by using a series of morph targets which were layered for fluid motion. Recreating this effect in-game was an enormous challenge. Due to the restrictions of the N64, less than ten bones were available for the facial rig and even that was bordering on excessive. A separate talking stunt head was used in many cases to achieve the illusion of life. For speed of animation, driven keys were set up in Maya for elements of major expressions and for all the phoneme mouth shapes. The best example of this can be seen below and the near-final scene can be found on the Cinematic and Turok 3 pages.