danielpk
02-25-2003, 07:34 PM
Hi,
I am new here and this is my first post.
I've written some MEL scripts that will set up a complex blend shape system. The idea came up as I animated a face with blend shapes and ran into the problem that certain combinations of blend shape targets didn't look as I had expected. So I ended up with about 80 targets (20 were animated, the others were linked with set driven keys or expressions to certain combinations).
Furthermore I wanted to be able to edit the targets at any time so I had to keep them all in the scene. You propably can imagine that it was no fun working with a scene of about 250MB.
Not really what I wanted, so I took the time to learn some MEL and started to develop a system where you can control the appearance of every combination you want. You simply select all "influences" of each target and the script will do the following:
- add the additional "combination" targets
- create a control curve (with the animatable attributes)
- create an expression that chooses which target should be used
So in the end you have to animate the same number of attributes and all the combination targets will be included automatically.
The scripts also provide the possibillity to edit the targets even when they were already deleted in the scene.
You can download a zip file containing 5 MEL scripts and a readme.
DPK_combinations version 1.29 (http://www.stargrav.com/DPK_scripts/DPK_combinations1_29.zip)
I just started to learn MEL a few weeks ago and would appreciate any feedback (though my focus is on animation).
Daniel
I am new here and this is my first post.
I've written some MEL scripts that will set up a complex blend shape system. The idea came up as I animated a face with blend shapes and ran into the problem that certain combinations of blend shape targets didn't look as I had expected. So I ended up with about 80 targets (20 were animated, the others were linked with set driven keys or expressions to certain combinations).
Furthermore I wanted to be able to edit the targets at any time so I had to keep them all in the scene. You propably can imagine that it was no fun working with a scene of about 250MB.
Not really what I wanted, so I took the time to learn some MEL and started to develop a system where you can control the appearance of every combination you want. You simply select all "influences" of each target and the script will do the following:
- add the additional "combination" targets
- create a control curve (with the animatable attributes)
- create an expression that chooses which target should be used
So in the end you have to animate the same number of attributes and all the combination targets will be included automatically.
The scripts also provide the possibillity to edit the targets even when they were already deleted in the scene.
You can download a zip file containing 5 MEL scripts and a readme.
DPK_combinations version 1.29 (http://www.stargrav.com/DPK_scripts/DPK_combinations1_29.zip)
I just started to learn MEL a few weeks ago and would appreciate any feedback (though my focus is on animation).
Daniel