I have a small set of empties that will do a basic 2d facials animation for a length of about 100 frames. I am interested to link this up to shapes keys.
From my tutorial of the shape keys, this works perfect with armature. When I parented the armature after linking it to the shape key set, the armature moved as per normal, but the vertices stayed stationery.
My second attempt at eliminating the amature altogether resulted in some distortion, I have figured that to be because the distortions disappear when you you set the armatures to “pose mode”. Ofcourse the empties do not go into pose mode.
I really want to use shape keys with the empties, so I’d appreciate your advice. Thank you in Advance.
EDIT: I can possibly find other ways of getting the *.blend working, but I thought I’d ask first.
Well this can get a bit complicated … But not that hard to do since all the tools are already in Blender …
First of all make a complete copy of all the empties armature mesh . After that delete any unapplied modifiers such as subsurf and mirror . This is because you will be using the Apply Deformation script (In Object Mode 3D header -> Object -> Scripts), and these will get applied too and will later mess things up when using the RVK1 to RVK2 script (In Edit Mode 3D header -> Mesh -> Scripts) .
Now select a empty and its animation (if you have any) and either pose it the way you want to or go to the frame that the animation is at maximum . Now delete all the other hook/empty modifiers from the modifier stack (this is why you made a copy) and use the Apply Deformation script . The script will create a duplicate mesh (in the same spot) but with the shape that the hook made and the new mesh will have a clean modifier stack .
Now first select the mesh you want the shapekeys to be on and add a basis key from the Shapes panel . Now shift-select the deformed mesh, tab into Edit Mode and run the RVK1 to RVK2 script . The first mesh will now have a new shapekey just like the shape of the second one .
Now just repeat for each empty/hook …
Ofcourse the empties do not go into pose mode.
That really doesn’t matter . Pose space is a type of object space . If doing all the tedious work I described above seems too much just go ahead and use the hook/empties like you are doing now . Just remember to parent them to a bone (like the head), so that they move with head … though this might screw up your animations … It is always a good idea to set up parenting hierarchies before you start keying …
Thank you. I’ll try your approach over the weekend.