Combine multiple blendshape nodes

[mikael persson]

Hello,

I was just wondering if someone have a good way of combining multiple blendshape nodes into one blendshape node? I thought I was clever when I organised my shapes into different blend groups but now they cancel each other out. I've already hooked them all up to a control setup and I was hoping there would be a way of carrying over as much as possible of my previous work.

Mikael

[Janak Thakker]

Not sure what you mean by "blend groups" (?) but did you make sure all your different blend shape nodes where created with parallel blending?

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janak thakker | web: http://www.fatlittleindianboy.com/

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[matt estela]

Hmm, that's generally not a mistake people make twice. :)

Thinking out loud, you could write a script that'd turn on each blendshape slider in isolation, duplicate the shape and name it correctly, then create a fresh blendshape node, assign all the targets you've made, and hook matching names back into your controller setup. I'm pretty sure you won't find a pre-made solution like that on creativecrash or elsewhere unfortunately.

[mikael persson]

ha! No certainly not Matt. Janak, I had grouped the creation of the blendshapes by just selecting the lips/brows/etc on their own and creating a blendshape node for each category.

But I solved it! With a quick and dirty connection editor trick. I just added all the missing blendshapes into one of the already existing nodes and then I connected the old blend attributes to these new attribues while turning off the envelope on the old blendshape nodes. And everything works fine :)

Mikael

[matt estela]

It's an Easter miracle!

[Mark Serena]

whoa whoa! there's no miracle yet...we need to wait till monday for that.

[Janak Thakker]

Ok, that's how I always do it to keep it all neat and tidy but I've never had any clashing problems like you described? Oddness.

Did you use parallel blending?

//J

[Mark Serena]

should of added spoiler that last email. sorry.

[mikael persson]

But I didn't use Parallel Janak, 10 years away from render land in real-time kind of makes you forget these little secrets. Is there a way of switching the deformation mode at this stage?

Mikael

[Janak Thakker]

Well you should have told us and I could have stopped nagging about it...or not ;)

Hm...not that I know of (sometimes I've accidentally forgot to set it to parallel and cursed Mayas inflexibility regarding this). Just did a quick test and it looks like if you only have one blend node on your target geo and adds a new one with parallel set the excisting blend node will automagically be added to the parallel node. But for some reason it doesn't seem to work if you already have multiple shapes on your target mesh...so I guess this wouldn't work for you :-(

If there was a way to add additional channels to the parallel blend node you could probably connect all your blend nodes...but I couldn't find a way to do this. Should be doable tho', no?

//J

[mikael persson]

hehe, yes I should have. I do wonder though, what are the other deformations order good for when the mantra goes, always use parallel? But anyway it's all sorted now and the client is very happy!

[Janak Thakker]

Happy clients are good clients!

This is what I usually do (for a face setup):

Separate blend nodes for different parts (eg. eyes, brows, mouth etc) piped into a "transfer" mesh with deformation order set to "parallel".

Pipe the transfer mesh into a "receiver" blend node on the target mesh but with deformation order set to "front of chain" since this needs to happen before joint deformations.

One neat thing with this approach is that if you'd have to nuke history or whatever on your hero mesh you still have all the blends connected to the transfer geo, and any connections you've already done to controllers or whatnot- just one blend shape away from being reconnected to your updated target mesh. You can also use the transfer mesh as a source for wrapping the hero geo too (exclusive bind and everything else set to off and you won't loose any speed) if you for example made all the blends on a separate head mesh but need the final mesh to be a single full character mesh.

//J

[mikael persson]

That sounds very clever! Thanks for sharing!

Mikael