Scott Eaton: Portraiture and Facial Anatomy for Artists

I recently had the pleasure of completing the 3 day Portraiture and Facial Anatomy course with Scott Eaton, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Scott shared a wealth of knowledge on facial anatomy - how to recognise and understand various landmarks on the face for construction and deformation, variations on the bell curve, the differences between gender, race and species, as well as FACS breakdowns and so much more.

Here's an overview of the construction task over the three days.

Blocking in the Temporalis, Masseter, Medial and Lateral Pterygoids.

Adding the eyeballs, orbital fat, superior and inferior Tarsus, Levator tendon, Canthus and Orbicularis oculi. Also, cleaning up where the Masseter joins the Zygomatic bone.

Adding the Frontalis, Procerus, Corrugator supercilii (should have been under the frontalis), Orbicularis oris, Buccinator and Buccal fat (far too much!).

Adding Zygomaticus major and minor, Depressor labii inferioris, Depressor anguli oris, Mentalis, Levator labii superioris and chin fat (for the mentalis).

I need to practice noses!

Here are a few links you may want to bookmark;

• scott-eaton.com/category/bodies-in-motion
• scott-eaton.com/tutorials
• bodiesinmotion.photo
• FACS

Python in Maya: Simple node sorting

When applying a worldspace or relative transform to nodes in Maya, you'll often have to account for;

1. Control behaviour type (IK, Pole Vectors etc)
2. Control hierarchy

This is where you will probably need to look at sorting your list of nodes prior to applying the data.
Also, space-switch sorting will want to be run as an additional pass over control type and hierarchy. This dependency check will vary based on the type of space-switch setup the rigs are using.

I've added a simple sort setup with individual and combined priorities.
Edit: Enable web view if browsing on mobile.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and how you approach this task.