Shape Keys+

Adds a panel with extra options for creating, sorting, viewing, and driving shape keys.

|| Download || Blender 2.80 - 3.0
|| Changelog || v2.0.2 (September 24th, 2021)

|| GitHub

Shape Keys+ was made to help with managing over 200 shape keys on a fully rigged character. It focuses on saving time and decreasing the number of clicks needed for common operations such as moving or copying shape keys.

Click-holding or click-dragging on one of the Add / Copy / Remove sidebar buttons will open its respective specials menu.


(screenshot taken in Blender 2.83)

This add-on features:

  • Folders
    Manage shape keys with folders.

  • Shape Key Placement
    Control where shape keys are automatically placed after specific operations.

  • Copy Shape Key
    Copy the shape key, its driver, and all or some of its properties. Capable of copying and mirroring at the same time.

  • Multi-Selection
    Perform basic operations on multiple shape keys and folders at once. Compatible with “New Shape From Mix” as it creates a new shape out of a mix of the selected shape keys. Features compatible with multi-selection become exposed when at least one shape key or folder is selected.

  • Driver Sub-Panel
    ​View and edit the driver for a shape key’s value directly within the Shape Keys+ panel.

  • Manual Translation
    As of v2.0, Shape Keys+ ignores Blender’s automatic translations API which I found did more bad than good to my UI. The entire add-on including its listing in the preferences has been manually translated to Japanese. This translated version is best downloaded from the releases page on GitHub, but can effectively be configured at any time simply by changing the language property in the shape_keys_plus/config.ini file and restarting Blender.

26 Likes

Very helpful for me! Nice. Thanks for sharing.

Wow! Thank you! Thats really usefull!

Thanks for good job

Thks MontagueMGM, very good job! I don’t use shapekey but I must study it soon…
Congratulations.

Man, thank you so much for the update!, I really like this addon

Wow! Thanks for this!

Hmm, seems like checkboxes doesn’t work as expected, I can’t move selected with checkboxуы shapekeys to the folder.

Multi-selection is lacking many features at the moment due to the amount of conditions considered when performing an operation on a single shape key, but I’m currently reworking the multi-select system so that I can add this feature (and others like it) in 1.2.x.

Hey I’m trying out the newer version 1.2, but I dont know exactly why I get 2 very similar panels


could something have changed?

The above panel is from the first version of the add-on, where the Shape Keys+ panel used the class name “OBJECT_PT_skp_shape_keys_plus”. In 1.2 it’s been changed to “DATA_PT_shape_keys_plus”.

I’ve only been able to replicate this issue by installing 1.2 right after 1.0, but it fixed itself after re-opening the .blend file. In any case, the 1.0 panel should go away if you run this line of code in the Python Console editor:

bpy.utils.unregister_class(bpy.types.OBJECT_PT_skp_shape_keys_plus)

ah cool thank!, restarting blender fixed it!

Thank you for sharing the script, looks really great! Grouping keys is a huge help when managing big facial rigs. I’m looking for something making inbetween shapes and corrective combinations a bit more easy to add for a facial pipeline. I’m pretty new to blender - how tricky would it be to add something like that to your script? Mostly from a FACS based facial point of view, adding a shape key and defining it to be dialed for example as a combination of jawOpen and lipCornerPuller, or adding inbetweens to an eyeClosed to do something like eyelid unfolding.

1 Like

Creating corrective shapekeys should be a breeze to do, you can just have 2 at 1, and then sculpt on a new one, which gives you the corrective shapekey, then with drivers you can easily create a connection that depends on both approaching 1 together. I can explain further, if you need but this can give you an idea.

1 Like

Thanks Looch! Makes sense, wasn’t sure if the driver was meant to be for joint transforms for things like pose based deformers or if it could be anything - but if a given combination of multiple shapes can trigger the shape than that’s all I’d need I guess. Maybe a single shape’s partial values could be used as a driver for inbetweens as well, if so I’m all set… :slight_smile:

yes it can, it can seem cumbersome to setup if you haven’t used drivers in blender before, but, it looks more bureaucratic than it is.
If you need help setting it, let me know, I tested it yesterday :slight_smile:

Hi could someone tell me to which directory i need to extract it?

If you have Windows 10; in AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons
I think most convenient is to dowload zip;

Then extract and install ui_shape_keys_plus.py from within blender. (Or place it manually in the appdata…etc folder. And restart Blender).

2 Likes

It shouldn’t have to be extracted to any location manually, especially if that location varies depending on version and operating system. Blender add-ons can be installed by selecting the downloaded .zip at User Preferences > Add-ons > Install Add-on from File. After which you can delete the downloaded .zip, since it was extracted to Blender’s add-on directory automatically.

Hello. I’m new to blender. I create a character with basis & several other shape keys (e.g. blink eyes, smile, etc). I want to create new character from this base mesh (e.g. fatter, bigger head, more wrinkles, etc) by changing the basis shape key, but at the same time also maintain the rest of the shape keys in the new character (e.g. blink eyes, smile, etc). @MontagueMGM Can this add on help me to get what I want? If not, any other way/ add on can do it? Appreciate your help. Thanks.