I think I’m getting a handle on RVKs (albeit slowly).
Anyway, it seems really tedious if I have already added a heap of RVKs to a mesh and then I need to edit the mesh vertices for some reason (yes I know someone will say “just make sure the mesh is finished before adding the RVKs” - but in the real world that just ain’t gonna happen).
The only way I can see for it to be done is to select the RVKs one at a time in the ipo window and then edit the mesh for each. If I have say 20 RVKs, that’s a whole lot of work.
So, is there an easier way (especially in the case when the editing has nothing to do with the vertices that get moved in the RVK)?
A solution that might work for you: Make another RVK in which you make all your changes. Then in action editor move the slider for the new RVK to 1 and leave it.
I was frustrated by this problem too. I’d understood Relative vertex keys to only store those vertices that differed from the base key but it’s not so. The whole set is stored which leads me to wonder in what way they’re “relative” and what exactly the base key does? I’d assumed that editing the base key would result in “relative” changes to all other keys but not so - the other keys don’t change (unless oyu physically add/subtract vertices/loops in which case you may get away with it or you might lose some of your keys).
I think the “solution” might be to rely as little as possible on keys and achieve as much as possible with bones and constraints which are independent of the mesh and are therefore, in theory anyway, transportable to different meshes even. This option also offers more flexibility of movements but limits the ability to quickly and easily combine multiple changes.
Sketchy’s suggestion of creating another RVK for mesh modifications really got me thinking - it’s a tremendous idea! You just have to make sure not to modify the base. And it’s simple, you have this one RVK and use it for all the mesh mods. That’s really thinking outside the old “quad”. In fact I think it’s an idea worthy of putting in the manual, because it has the potential to save a lot of work in rigging.
I also agree with AndyD. I try to use bones wherever I can, but there are times when you’ve just gotta use RVKs (usually facial poses where it would be too impractical to have say 30 bones with each one controlling just one or two vertices - although I have used 12 bones just to close a cartoony eyelid which gives a nice stretching arc over the eye).
Ammusionist suggested using the new “shapes” in 2.40. It sounds like this may be the way to go in the (hopefully, very near) future. It’s just that at this very moment I’m using 2.37a because I don’t want to save work only to find out that the eventual 2.40 production release can’t read in earlier 2.40 alpha files (call me paranoid, but it’s happened before with other good software). Still, I’ve got 2.40-RC1 around here somewhere so I’ll have a look - should be fun.
Shapes and RVKs are the same thing. The only difference is that 2.4 has a nice GUI interface for working with them. I just tried using 2.4 to modify the base mesh and the changes were not reflected in the other shapes.
So the bad news is that just switching to 2.4 and using shapes won’t solve your problem. The good news is that RVKs are now much easier to work with (and of course my earlier proposed solution will still work). The other good news is that your wait for 2.4 is over! So go download!
