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View Full Version : bake topology + blend shapes still work?

OneFuzzyBrain
03-22-2007, 04:19 AM
I'm tryin to fix up a character of mine but have been having a lot of troubles...

I am trying to merge a couple vertices on my character... vertices that were supposed to be merged a long time before I started rigging. These vertices are right next to eachother and they won't be changing the mesh of my character very much if merged. I am trying to bake that change through my blend shapes so that the vertices are merged on my blend shapes also. I can save out the weights of my character, unskin it, merge the vertices, bake the topology through the blend shapes, then delete history, re-skin, import those saved weights, apply the blend shapes again, but any method of baking I use... the blend shapes won't work anymore. Maya's "bake topology to targets" tool is a piece of crap, and the other baking script i was trying to use doesn't seem to work properly also. I was wondering if anyone knew how to bake mesh changes to blend shapes while keeping those blend shapes still usable... any help would be great. I've tried a million different ways to try to get this to work, but I am just about ready to give up.
twedzel
03-22-2007, 09:10 PM
Have you tried merging the verts on your base mesh while keeping your history intact, then applying each blendshape one by one and duplicating your base mesh each time? Ie put your LSmile blendshape to 1, duplicate the mesh (Thereby recreating LSmile), then turning off LSmile and turning on LFrown duplicate etc etc etc. Basically you are allowing the history to do the bake topology work for you and forgetting about buggy bake topology scripts. Then delete history on the base, reskin, and reapply your new blendshapes.

One warning, turn any skinning or other deformer envelopes off or you will be baking those deformers in as well if the verts are off the base meshes default pose positions.

I just tried it with a couple of cubes in a scene and it works.

Try doing it with one or two blendshapes and see if it works.
OneFuzzyBrain
03-23-2007, 12:20 AM
wow, i would've never thought of that in a million years. I am doing something else right now but I will have to try that very soon. The process sounds very logical and it should probably work for my character. Thanks a ton for the help!
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