blendshapespaintingweightsnightmare

# 1 17-02-2007 , 02:58 AM

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Ok, here is what I did: I made my model working on just half with an instance. I then duplicated the half several times to make my blendshapes. After making the facial expressions, I created the blends. I then duplicated my model by using the option 'instance leaf nodes'. I took the two halves, combined and merge vertices. I checked the blend shapes and everything seemed to be working fine.

So I made my skeleton, smooth bound it and then painted weights. When I tested the joints everything seemed to be working fine. But when I applied the blend shapes..... aaargghh... see the picture which shows my model and one of the blendshape duplicates. I seem to still be able to use the paint skin weights tool to push everything back in place, but it's proving really tricky to paint individual vertices and surely it's just going to **** up the weights that I have already painted.

Any ideas as to what's going on and how I can resolve it? Help!

Thanks in advance! user added image

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Last edited by arran; 17-02-2007 at 03:00 AM.

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# 2 17-02-2007 , 03:23 AM

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once you merge the two halves, it becomes a new mesh. so the blenshapes will not work. this is because of vertex ordering.

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# 3 17-02-2007 , 03:32 AM

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hmmm. after I merged the two halves, the blend shapes still seemed to be working fine - it was just when I bound the skin and started moving limbs that things went wierd - the face still makes a smile but when you move the arm vertices start flying on the body. Is this because the body is trying to go to the blend shape body? Should I have just made a blendshape for the head, rather than the whole body? When you make blend shapes, do you keep the head and body as seperate pieces of geometry? Also do you make the blend shape on just half and then duplicate? sorry for so many questions.

My head is hurting. I need a smoke.

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# 4 17-02-2007 , 04:14 AM

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i usually make blends for the body after its skinned. the head can have blends before its skinned.
i would make 2 meshes. one mesh is broken into pieces like hands feet body head, then i use those pieces as wrap deformers on the mesh that will be rendered. that gives a lot of room to make corrective shapes for the body. maya is very iffy when it comes to blendshapes and mesh duplication.

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# 5 17-02-2007 , 04:46 AM

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thanks vladimirjp. That helps. user added image

wrap deformers are a bit beyond me at the moment, but I'll start reading up on them.

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# 6 17-02-2007 , 02:22 PM

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ok, sorry to ask this again, but just so I have this straight - when creating blend shapes you have to build the shape for the whole face, rather than just half the face and then duplicating it, right?

Just want to make sure before I get rid of my old shapes and build everything from scratch.

Thanks...

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# 7 18-02-2007 , 01:56 AM

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Yes, blends aer done with the whole head...

Creating Blends for Animation needs to be done with multiple duplicates of the head (the whole object that has been merged), this needs to be copied prior to skinning to the skeleton. Once you have done this you can then create copies of the head to allow you to create multiple blends. Once skinned these blends should work fine and not cause the problem you have just now.

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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