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View Full Version : Adv: Creating Blend shapes window with thumbnail picture

themiragemaker
04-05-2002, 09:11 AM
Hey all,

I remember some time back (think it was Maya3 days) a colleague of mine had created various blend shapes of a face and he had a blend shape window with horizontal sliders and at the side of each slider was a small thumbnail photo of the expression :mad: :( :D
eg. If he had a smile blend shape he had the horizontal slider at the side and next to in, on its left, he had a small roughly 64 X 64 thumbnail picture of the guy with the smile blend shape used :@ - this being a great way to visually see quickly how the blend shape looks without having to pull each slider to test the end effect.
As Im really interested in gettin into technical direction I would really like to know more abt this. I guess it was done with MEL scripting but if I remember correctly he wasnt too MEL savvy so Im guessing perhaps there is a free tutorial or MEL script out somewhere that does this - pls let me know as soon as possible even the slightest feedback u can give me on this topic !!


Thanks,
themiragemaker.
Deepray
04-06-2002, 04:05 AM
You can also use a printed "makeit with your word processor" copy to put next you. My office's wall looks cool with a lot of pictures from renders of my work... ;) :D
themiragemaker
04-06-2002, 09:19 PM
Well.. Its a whole lot cooler to have a window within Maya that has the blend shape window with their picture next to it for ese of animation and keying frames,etc.

The main advantage being if you're into ttechnical direction - u create all the key blend shapes with their corresponding pictures next to 'em and u can hand the file out to all the animators working on it to use without them having to pull each and every slider to see what exactly each of the 25 or whatever blend shapes actually do !

Thanks for the tip though - hope someone also gives the method to do this - that would be awesome !

Cheers,
Themiragemaker.
Lyr
04-06-2002, 11:59 PM
Go to the help menu, select mel command referance then sort by funtion and start reading about the commands under the UI heading. To do something like what you are talking about you have to script it, no way around it. You may be able to alter a pre-buillt character GUI or get some ideas from one, but you will have to script. Oh yeah there is a script called attribute collection (on A|W's site) that may help speed things up a bit.
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