Blendshapes -facial features

# 1 22-11-2008 , 06:43 AM

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Join Date: Oct 2008

Posts: 56

I have a single character mesh, i duplicate him then removed all the body parts except for the head. Now maya doesnt want the head to be blendshaped with my character. Why is that? Does the geometry have to be from the same mesh aka i shouldnt have deleted the unused parts of my characters mesh?

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# 2 22-11-2008 , 07:38 AM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: UK

Posts: 6,287

To La Bomb

what you are asking is quite an advanced area of workflow. I can give you the answer but I really need to ask first do you know the process of creating blendshape basics? and do you understand why and how they work?

Jay

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# 3 22-11-2008 , 03:22 PM

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Join Date: Oct 2008

Posts: 56

i know blendshapes are useful for animating facial expressions. The orginal geometry is the base shape, and then I have the target shape. Once the target mesh is deformed you can key it and then with the blendshape slider it then morphs between the two.

Oringally I had only the head as my target and I deleted all my faces. but it didn't want to blend with the base of the character since it was the whole body. I believe the geometery has to be the same starting mesh. But after I create the blendshape I could just delete it right?

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# 4 22-11-2008 , 03:36 PM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: UK

Posts: 6,287

the thing with having a single mesh with blendshapes is that no matter if you delete them, the fact remaining that the info from the mesh is still from each blend and this is what Maya will look at, so if the character raises a brow it still got all the info from the rest of the mesh in there so it has to look at each point.

However there is a way around it. By simpley extracting the head from the mesh and duplicating it across for your blends (however many you need)

then With the original head selected then the body combine them back together then one by one merge the verts back together. Now the trick is here to do exactly one by one because if you do it all in one go maya will reorder the point numbering and screw it all up.

But done correctly and the values remain the same, you can then put the head shapes into the Single mesh, therefore cutting down in geo for maya to look at when it deforms. If you wish you can still delete the shapes after

Jay

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