How to Create a Face Camera in Maya

We recommend always creating a Face Camera when you animate characters in Maya. The reason for this is that you don't want to keep having to zoom in on your character in the viewport to find the facial controls. Constant zooming in and out will slow down your workflow and, worse of all, encourages the animator to neglect the facial expressions altogether. Good facial expressions are crucial to making good animation, because it's how we know what the character is thinking and feeling. And without an emotional underpinning, your audience won't connect to your animation.

How to create a face camera
To create a face camera in Maya, follow these simple steps. First, create a camera, and name it faceCam. Then select the Camera, shift-select the character's head control, and parent the camera (Press P on your keyboard) to parent the camera to head control.

Then, tear off the face camera (Panels/tear off) so you can return to the faceCam whenever you need it. This will save you a lot of time when animating facial expressions. To see this process in more detail, watch the video above:

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