Setting Up Facial Rig For Planet Of The Apes' Caesar

Earlier, we showcased an incredibly detailed facial rig by Giovanni Manili, who spent nearly a year building it from scratch, learning throughout the process, and sculpting around 230 corrective shapes to bring this ambitious project to life. Now, he's begun a new facial rig project based on Ramesh Shanker's fan art of Caesar, the iconic leader of the apes from the Planet of the Apes franchise.

Ramesh provided the sculpt, while Giovanni handled full-body retopology, UVs, and refinements to areas like the inner mouth and eyes, also establishing a neutral expression for optimal facial animation. He's leveraging his previous rig as a foundation, using basic skinning to block out a rough jawOpen shape that will be refined during facial modeling. The original Caesar will also receive enhancements in texturing, lookdev, and grooming by Ramesh.

Take a look at another video from Giovanni showcasing the retopology process:

Giovanni also mentioned that he's always found it frustrating to smooth and adapt the mesh to the live object while trying to view the topology at higher subdivisions without losing the shape of the high-res sculpt. He shared a helpful video from 3dWithAnAccent that offers a solution to this issue:

Check out Caesar by Ramesh Shanker, and follow Giovanni Manili on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the progress of this project:

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