NLA: Import Shape Key Facial Animation / Bone Body Animation to Character?

Hey BA,

I have a question in regards to NLA and animation pipelines in Blender. Coming from Maya, I am trying to get up to speed. Here’s what I have to combine:

  1. Facial mocap: This comes in as animated shape keys, no bones, face only.
  2. Body mocap: Traditional full skeleton mocap (bvh) imported to character.
  3. Multiple takes of face and body to complete the shot.

In Maya, I’d export each of the face and body animations as Trax clips (Maya’s NLA Editor). Then I would open my completed character (face/body rigged) and import face clip and body clip into the Trax NLA editor. Now I have my combined performance attached to my final character.

What would be the best way to achieve a similar workflow in Blender? I know how to convert bone animations to actions, but I can’t seem to find a way to do the same for Shape Keys. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I am really trying to ditch Autodesk in our studio. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Corey