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tjnyc
11-20-2003, 03:02 PM
Hey,

I have a question that didn't hit me until just a few minutes ago. I am a Mirai user and the one of many things I love about it is the ability to continue modeling/sculpting while IK, and/or morphing deformation is in place. So if I created a morphing displacment in Mirai I could sculpt the added geometry to get the facial expression I would want, but still have the same neutral facial expression when I returned to a neutral state with the added geometry and so on. Something Bay Raitt of the Gollum facial team does with Mirai for Gollum's many sculpted expressions.

So my quesion is can it be done with messiah? Basically, I want to create a facial rig using bones and metaeffectors, and then change my meshes's facial expression to say anger, but I want to change and enhance the mesh in my host app at that state of anger. Maybe reapply if need be and return the facial expression to neutral and still have the same neutral facial expression even with added geometry to the mesh. I would continue this method of creating poses with the facial rig and making the needed changes and/or addtions to my mesh in the host app. At the end I would have my catalog of morph shapes exactly the way I want them, which I can use as my morph targets in messiah and still have the the facial rig for slight adjustments and such.

I plan on trying this out soon, but I would like to get some opinion on those that know messiah better than I do at this point.


Thanks,
Julez4001
11-20-2003, 03:35 PM
What are you using tomodel your geometry?
If Lightwave, then you can update the morph targets(endomorphs) at any time or do you want export the morph targets after messiah deforms them with bones and edit that?
simeon.n
11-20-2003, 03:55 PM
Do you want to be able to create a 'quick' facial expression with a facial rig in messiah, then take it into a modeler and tweak it? Just trying to clarify your question.

You can do this with messiah and Lightwave, but it's a bit of a work around. Connect your deformed object to lightwave so you can see its deformations in the layout viewport, then use Lightwave's "Save Transformed Object" feature to save the current frame as a new .lwo of the deformed object. You can then tweak this pre-deformed object in a modeler and use it as a morph target back inside messiah.
tjnyc
11-20-2003, 04:03 PM
Not export, but be able to change the mesh in the host app and still maintain and update the deformation relationship in Messiah. So the morph is created or updated so to speak on the fly from what was changed or reworked in the host app and updates all the other morph and base states in messiah while maintaining the bone driven relationship. This way I can position the facial rig to different kind of poses and then go back into my host app and rework the mesh with wrinkles for example and have messiah recoginze that a morph shape update or addition needs to be made at the particular bone transformation state.

I'm not sure if this is possible as messiah is right now, but if it isn't I hope to look into scripting and automating this type of workflow regardless of the host app.


Cheers,
Freebooter
11-20-2003, 05:51 PM
I've been thinking about this too, also since seeing what was done with Gollum.

As far as I can tell it should be possible. It would be assisted by a modeller tie-in for messiah, so that messiah can tell if a model has been changed in some way, and reload it for you. Short of that it's a bit of a long winded process.

Chop off the head so that you've working with just a rigged head in messiah. Rig the head and make face shapes. Connect to LW, use save transformed object, (make sure that sub-patches are off).

Transformed Object is now a morph state. Change it in modeller, load into Messiah as a morph.

and so on ... When you rig it onto the main model, use Puppet Master to deform the base mesh with the rigged and animate-able one.

Has the major downer of not updating changes in the base mesh though, which can sorta clog the whole process up. I'm hoping a modeller tie in is on the list.
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