Binding separate body parts
 

If you have separate body parts and bind them all to the same skeleton, how are you supposed to avoid tearing where the body parts meet up during animation?
I presume the head is used as a separate object for creating blendshapes, so how can you avoid tearing at the neck

I guess you have to merge vertices at the edges of the parts. Check out the Hand tutorial (in the modeling section) where the fingers are modeled apart from the rest of the hand and then "glued" to it via Merge Vertices...

Re: Binding separate body parts
 

won't happen,
after u create a blendshape "node", u can even delete shape target objects.

So how is facial animation done? Do you make duplicates of the whole model for blendshapes? Seems a bit inefficient when you'll only be moving a couple of verts on the face.

yes, u duplicate facial poses and usde them as blend shapes.
some people use a combination of blendshape and bones for a facial rig.
but i think blend shapes require less calculation and a bit faster when animated, plus u can have a as many shapes as u want.


url removed!

Thanks for the info vlad. Just to clarify, I leave the head on the model and duplicate the entire model for blendshapes rather than doing the head separately?

One other thing: I'm currently painting the head weight completely white, so that the eyes and teeth move stay in the correct position. Is this the best way of doing it or is there something more effective.

u can do blend shapes for the head only then attatch it to the body, or u can duplicate entire body if u want.
parent the eye and teeth to joints.

Yeah, I disconnected the head, did blend shapes and reconnected and it worked. Excellent.

right on