As I’ve been weight painting my model, I suddenly realized… if the mesh were realistic it would wrinkle as it moved. For example, if a face dropped its jaw, instead of the neck smoothly becoming smaller, the neck should produce wrinkles. The weight paint effect is not realistic at all.
Is there a way to get the mesh to produce wrinkles instead of shrinkage? Professional movies have this, don’t they? So then Maya must do this? Can Blender?
You should spend more time learning the basics.
Weight paint is the only way to go and blender does a very good job. Rigging in blender is really powerful. Wrinkles are usually sculpted and baked. You can use shape keys too.
Anyway, if the whole animation of the body or face are well done and balanced nobody is gonna care about the wrinkles on the neck.
You can create larger wrinkles using driven shape keys, or perhaps through clever use of cloth sim (though I’ve never tried that).
Smaller wrinkles would need to be done with some kind of driven bump/displacement map, I suspect.
Shape keys are the way to go.
You should also learn the mesh deform modifier, as the deformation it produces is much more efficient than the one that simple weight painting delivers. That, in combination with sculpted details, shapekeys, muscle simulation and underlying skin details with the shrinkwrap modifier could generate very realistic results.
Here´s is a little video of my project, it is called BlenRig
You can download it at www.jpbouza.com.ar. There are a lot of different possibilities and techniques in blender to achieve realistic results!
OK - excellent. I currently use zbrush and displacement to create pre existing wrinkles. But for new wrinkles to form - it sounds like most of you are suggesting the shape keys. I will definitely try that! I appreciate all the great advice!
I would like to know how I link the cage of mesh deform modifier to Armarture/bone??
So that when I move the bone in pose mode the cage will follow