Hi;
Is there a way to create Maya style in-between shapes in Blender? I can see that it’s not built in… It is possible to do it with driven IPO’s as far as I can see. But what if the number of blend shapes to interpolate inbetween exceed a managable amount like over 10 or 20? Is there a script or plug-in written for that? Users who are also familiar with Maya might just get my drift…
Thanx in advance for all replies;
Cheers;
AJ
Can you be a lil’ more specific? In Blender they’re called shape keys, in Maya they’re (ironically) called Blend Shapes. The main difference is that…
…in Blender, you deal with one mesh which (with relative shape keys) you create variations for by adding another shape key and moving the vertices around. This gives you lots of sliders for each manipulations
…in Maya you tend to create several different meshes, one for each shape, and hide them somewhere. You then shift-select them to the “master” and opt to “create blend shapes”. This results in a bunch of sliders in the shape key controls, very similar to the above slide bars in Blender.
Both approaches have their strengths and drawbacks.
When I was studying 3D Animation we basically had to use Maya. Not liking the expectancy of having to pirate Maya to “survive” the course, I opted to largely use Blender at home. I made my characters completely in Blender, and even had Shapekeys / Blendshapes done in Blender. I exported these as OBJs for importing into Maya for animation. (I was able to reveal a bug in the UV editor to do with UV borders which was then speedily fixed at the time). Often I would have to rotate newly imported blendshapes 90 degrees and sometimes resize them on importing from Blender to Maya. A few times (and I do mean a few) an imported mesh would break (end up with vertices renumbering for some reason and causing porcupine like distortions) but in summary…
…it’s not only possible, the two are even compatible in regard to blendshapes and the like… you just may need to rework a few things.
Post if you want more details on any point / would like to see what I did etc.
[quote=Lancer;1140380]Can you be a lil’ more specific? In Blender they’re called shape keys, in Maya they’re (ironically) called Blend Shapes. /quote]
I meant to say shapes, a little rethoric that comes with working with Maya for years… But my question is far from that… What I meant to know was how can one interpolate between different shapes in Blender? Like, imagine a bulgy eyelid on a spherical eyeball… Could you slide the eyelid in one go across the eyeball’s surface, in a linear fashion as a singularly interpolated shape would… No… You have to interpolate between inbetween shapes that cover a little portion of the overall movement on their own and then interpolate inbetween them so as to give the illusion of circular deformation (phew :))
As a Maya user, I’m still having trouble understanding what you’re wanting to do, on the Maya level.
I remember having issues trying to do exactly that (lid curves around an eyeball) in Maya when I was being taught by industry professionals. Their obvious-to-them at the time solution was to key start and end sweep of a Nurbs sphere. The reasons this didn’t work when applied involved various issues with having “thickness” to the eyelid, allowing the lid to also scrunch with expressions (angry & sad), an uncomfortable “pop” which happens when Nurbs shapes close and other things like the whole thing falling apart into separate shapes when working inside a lattice.
In the end, I made my own system where I had eight (nine if you count neutral) eyelid blendshapes around the eye controller. The whole thing was geared up through the expression editor. The main controller was a square with a small circle in it which when you moved it up and down the lids would open wide or close. Left and right meant they moved from sad to neutral to angry. Because I had a “tilt” controller, the eyeball cloud be slanted to make other expressions like “happy” which was not on the base blendshapes. I remember discovering (to my horror) that the eyeball would sometimes burst through the eyelids as some points, so I also had expressions which told the eyeball to shrink at certain stages. Very complex but it worked… my tutors scolded me because they saw this as taking too much time when they just wanted me animating. Still, I was happy with the result and it made the (once I was onto it) final animations a lot more automatic.
Anyway, short of posting up my Maya rig I’ve possible missed your point again. Perhaps you could show me something I’ll wish I knew back then on the Maya level?
Could you be wanting the difference between what Blender sees as “absolute” and “relative” shape keys?
In relative, you have many sliders and they add up distortions on each other.
On absolute, it’s more like smooth transition with one control.
…I’ve been having issues with absolute myself which no one has answered yet (hint hint anyone reading. Animation Support thread)
I think what he means is a way to put an inbetween position ( in essence another shape key ) within ONE Shape Key.
And yes the only way I know how to do this is through driven IPOs. While I suppose one could get elaborate with all these ‘inbetween’ positions, One could simply add an armature bone to control a bunch of them.
E.g. You have Smile.LEFT, SmileHalfway.LEFT, SmileQuarterWay.LEFT,
You could have each of them activate when a bone’s LocY changes. Thus your activating multiple Shape Keys with one control.
I hope that helps.