Originally posted by ereitz Hi Thomas, obviously got that one all wrong... Hehe, no problem buddy! All of this would obviously also be possible with clusters - But I don't like them ;-) since you're using joints - have you hidden their parent or are they just single joints with locators attached? They're single joints with locators attached and those locators are parented to other locators. For example, the l_lipMiddle joint is attached to the l_lipMiddleLoc Locator and the l_lipMiddleLoc Locator is attached to the low_mouthRotLoc Locator. Sounds pretty complicated, but it is not - It's pretty easy to use. After all, I'll create a NURBS Curves Control System to have everything under direct control :-) will you be using blend shapes after you've weighted your model? Maybe I'll add a few blendShapes for details like wrinkles or something like that, but generally the animation will be driven by joints. I gave up using bones for facial animation finding it difficult to use paint weights to weight. I use a combination of clusters and very basic bones to make blend shapes. Ohh, you think so? I used to work with 3ds Max and, I tell you, skinning is HORRIBLE with Max. Weight Painting is a really, really nice, powerfull feature. Although Maya has some pretty bad problems when it comes to exporting/importing skin weights. I found a pretty nice script called "saveWeight.mel" on Highend - Works pretty well for me! Your method of using a multitude of little bones looks similar to the effect of using clusters. Or is there a big difference? Well, no I don't think so. It's just a prefrence, cause I'm used to paint weights with joints :-)