Hey fellas,
I am back with another article, this time on the very useful option of BLEND SHAPES in Autodesk MAYA.

Yaa, I know you all are eager to know what we can do with blend shapes and where can we use them but before that, let me ask you a very basic question, What are BLEND SHAPES?

You might say that blend shape helps us in rigging a character or you could animate a character's facial expression with blend shape or you might be coming up with something totally different concept of crushing a thing with the help of blend shapes.

But all these things are what blend shape can do. Its not the answer for my question.

Blend shape is basically "a method of 3D computer animation. In a blend shape animation, a deformed version of a mesh is stored as a series of vertex positions. In each key frame of an animation, the vertices are then interpolated between these stored positions."

Blend shape is also known as "morph target animation" because basically what it does is morphing.

Blend shape can be used in many creative ways, but It helps mostly in animating the facial expressions of a character. It can also be used for animating skin and cloth too, though it all depends on your creativity on how to use blend shapes and where to apply this cool function.

Soon I'll post a tutorial on how to use blend shapes and its other aspects.

Cheers (y)