Speeding up Blend Shapes?

[dwalden74]

Have you tried using Deform->Edit Membership Tool ? With this you limit the area of your deformation to only chosen points. This can speed things up considerably, because Maya simply has fewer points to keep track of. However, if each blendShape target is deforming a different area of your geometry, then I´m not sure how helpful it´ll be.

[Nenox]

Yeah, I would surgest the same as David.

I have on some occations made multiple blendshapenodes on the same character mesh. One affecting only the head verts and another affecting just the verts that were tweaked by my body shapes. However I don't know if the slowdown of having several blendshapenodes (two or more) is just as bad as having all character verts in one. Maybee you can avoid using the paralel blender if the vert sets don't overlap and that might reduce the speed impact.

One thing you can do is to delete your targets once you are done with them. That usualy gives a noticable speed increase. Also if you don't want to use the set membership tool after assigning your blends, you can simply have the verts selected in component mode as you assing the blendshape.

Cheers,
Nenox.

[Stahlberg]

How do you do that? (select verts only) How do you tell Maya which group of verts is the target, and which is the base? I've never tried it, because I've never noticed a slowdown with my blendshapes. I've had over 60 full-body blendshapes, without having to edit membership or delete the targets or anything. The only thing is I didn't have the head included, maybe that's the big difference. Otherwise I can't see what we're doing differently. My base is the low-poly cage, but it's still up to 5000 verts or so. What are you guys using - the smoothed high-poly surface? Or even a Subdivided surface?

[dwalden74]

How do you do that? (select verts only) How do you tell Maya which group of verts is the target, and which is the base?
I tried this once too, although I think using Edit Membership is a wiser solution. I did it by putting the points into sets, then selecting the set members in the correct order and applying the blendShape deformer. It worked, but I think I remember having problems then adding new targets...it was a long time ago, so I can´t really remember.

-d

[Nenox]

Hi mr. Stahlberg.

To create a Blend Shape Node with a limited selection of verts do one of the following.

1. In component mode select the approiate verts on the mesh, that you want to have the Blend Shape Node on, and >Create Blend Shape. Than add your targets as normal.

or

2. In object mode select your target(s). Then rightclick over the "mainmesh" and select vertice from the markingmenu. Shift select the verts you want and >Create Blend Shape.

You can of course still use the edit membership tool afterwards. This approach has not given me any problems,
but it sounds like David may have also have limited the verts assigned by selecting them on the targets too. This I haven't tried. I was just pointing out an alternative to editing membership after the fact, as a workflow option.

Sorry if I'm stating to obvious!

B.t.w.: The reason for the speed increase when deleting blendshapes I don't know. I think it's either that maya does no longer have to look at the targets all the time, but stores the information in the blendshape node or because it only stores the verts that are different from the mainmesh (making the set mebership thing unessary if you are going to delete your shapes anywayy) or a combination of both. Maybe David could enlighten us?? (Please :) )

Cheers,
Nenox.

[Morganism]

Hey, thanks for the responses, guys! I'll definately give this a try when I get near Maya again.

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