Blending help!!!

[futurcraft]

well.. The morphTimingBlend script which comes with the Hyper Real Blend Shape modeling DVD of Alias hdoes the exact same thing.. it even dials in the blend shapes and creates inbetween targets for you... including various combinations of your file texture based on the vertex positions of the clamp value(dialed in value) of the blend...

Hope tht helps...

[bazuka]

man i found the script, but that doesnt do what i need...

[temo]

2solutions I can think of .

in compositing/editing software animate the blending textures, lets say frame 01 is the original texture and frame 10 is the first blendshape texure. you can control the type of blending that occurs (wrapping,liquidizing, etc) export the movie as frames. then on your base mesh plug the texture as you would plug an animated texture/movie(instead of one texture)
lets say texture01.iff is the original texture (example only, the blendshape starts at frame 2 and finishes at frame 10). , texture02.iff to texture10.iff and so on are the other textures you will switch to accordingly when the corresponding blend shape is activated. Animate the frames by keyframing manualy.
still, other way to do it - is in post. meaning render out sequence 0-10 with original texture (for ex. if blenshape finishes at frame 10), render again with the other texure, control the blending of these two movies in post software.

[bazuka]

10x for try man, but there are too many things to do, if people from lw can do that i cant believe that autodesk/alias didnt put something like that! so i have to buy/write custom script for something stupid like this :) ?!

[futurcraft]

Hey Temo...!
Tht was really one smart way of blending the two...

Bazuka...

I think temo's option is the best... for blending 2 different textures.. In ur editing software jus increase the transition blend time of the animated texture movie file.. u can even create a simple movie file with eg 45 frames of texture A & another 45 frames of texture B and that makes it 90frames.. which is 3 seconds for PAL.. then jus blend in the middle frames.. so u will have initially only texture A then the blend transition then to the texture B. & all this transition must match your blend shapes transition.... I'm sorry I Mis-interpreted your question earlier & led you to that script.. That script only works for one file texture. but it controls how that file texture blends into formation of the new shape asthe vertex positions change to the final blend from the original base shape..

Hope that helps....

[isoparmB]

Use a shading network with a layered texture in the color channel, with the top layer's alpha attribute connected to the blendshape target weight attribute?

[futurcraft]

Hey IsoparmB...!
Thanks...! looks like ur solution is one of the most robust...!:thumbsup:

[bazuka]

yeah, but what a hell im gonna do if i have more than 2 textures?

[isoparmB]

Hehe, thanks futurcraft.

bazuka, the only thing I can think up at the moment is to chain up multiple blend color nodes, one feeding into another, and connect the color blend attribute to the blendshape weight of each target.

For example, let's say you have four targets and one base model, with five unique textures. The first colorBlend node would have the base and first target feeding into the color, and the blend attribute connected to the weight of first target. The outColor of this would feed into the first color of the second colorBlend node, which would have the texture of the second target feeding into the second color on it, and the weight of the second target for the blend attribute of that colorBlend node, and so on and so forth. You'd end up with something like four color blend nodes, the end of would which would feed into the color attribute of your object's shader.

Of course, this would mean you'd have to arrange the chain in such a way that the sequence of color morphs would have a priority (you'd have an order of which texture appeared before another). The colorBlend closest to the shader would be the last priority, the one at the beginning of the chain would be the base texture and the first color morph, or vise versa (but you have to pick an order). That's because of the linear nature of the network, if all the textures were parallel and feeding into something that was blending between each this wouldn't be a problem.

Can't check this out myself though, I'm not in front of a workstation. :] I'll test this out myself when I have the time.

[doms]

Does anyone know if the morphTimingBlend script is available for download or do you have to buy the DVD? It sounds like exactly what i need.

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