ramp controlling blendshapes

[thematt]

yep I agree it would be cool, but it's not possible just like that.Because we don't have access to a node that would apply vetex color coresponding to a uv point..a agree it's pretty bad.
I bet you can do it easily in XSI ice. oh well maybe one day.

cheers

[joie]

Well, I guess I can manually paint the weights, but I was searching for a more elegant solution, like being able to SDK the ramp wich control the weights of the blendshape so I don't have to animate my paint weights work everytime I want to use it...

Thank's for the info though.

[djx]

A while ago I had a look at the Stroika plugins (http://www.kolektiv.com/products.php) and I'm pretty sure they had something called non-linear blendshapes that could be controlled by shaders. It might be worth a look.

-- David

[thematt]

yes the strika plug do have that option, and it's darn powerfull, but you ahve to buy it.
Why something so usefull hasn't it been interger in maya for all that time is still a mistery to me. I can see tons of aplication for such usefull fonction.

cheers

[thematt]

Hey Joie I've managed to take a look at the Dg and it's definetly not possible to do it stricly with node, but it was actually quite easy in mel.
So it's a start I guess and can be quite slow but you can assign a texture to an objet that have a blendShape and following the Uv you have set on the object it will set the blendShape accordingly.Can be much faster than painting and it can be animated without problem actually.

If you're interested I can share it here. Although it's can be quite slow on mesh with a lot of vertice since it has to loop through every vertice. still faster than painting on certain situation mostly for animation.
Would be cool if someone knowing API would write a simple node for getting the color at a vertex with the input of a texture.Then we could plug it in all kind of different thing.In the meantime it's a hack.

cheers

[joie]

I'd be very grateful if you could share that, I wanted to use it with NURBS, so my objects are very mel friendly and have very few CVs to play with. :)

[thematt]

hahaha..nurbs!! of course the one I made is for poly..ok let me take a look at something like that for nurbs.

in the meantime here it is for poly just in case

to use it source the script below and type:
Mr_colorBlendShape myobjetName myblendshapeName

the object that have the blendshape should have a texture assign in the color slot of his shader


global proc Mr_colorBlendShape(string $obj, string $blendShape)
{
//get the texture assign to the obj
string $shader[] = `listHistory -f 1 $obj`;
string $history[] = `listHistory $shader`;
string $texture[]= `ls -materials $history`;
string $colorTexture[]=`listConnections -s 1 -p 0 ($texture[0]+".color")`;
setAttr ($colorTexture[0]+".alphaIsLuminance") 1;

// get the number of vertex to loop on
int $size[] =`polyEvaluate -vertex $obj`;
int $i;

//loop on the vertice
for ($i=0;$i<$size[0];$i++)
{

// transform the vertex in Uv
string $map[]=`polyListComponentConversion -fv -tuv ($obj+".vtx["+$i+"]")`;
float $UV[]=`polyEditUV -q $map[0]`;

//sample the color
float $color[] =`colorAtPoint -o "A" -u $UV[0] -v $UV[1] $colorTexture[0]`;

//transfert the color at the vertex index to the blendshape weight on that vertex
setAttr ($blendShape+".inputTarget[0].inputTargetGroup[0].targetWeights["+$i+"]") $color[0];

// line that can be skip in case you don't want to set keyframe
setKeyframeBlendshapeTargetWts;
}
}

[thematt]

sorry having probl with the nurbs because I can't find the corresponding number from the blendShape deformer with cv selected..both number are way different and i don't really understand right now how to go from one to the other..in poly it was the same as the index of the vertex so it was easy.
maybe someone else can help us out..I don't have much expereience scripting for nurbs actually.

sorry.

cheers

[joie]

You don't have to be sorry for anything.

I usually use NURBS for quite simple things such as logos and they work pretty well. In fact I thought this would be easier with NURBS instead of polys..., what a shame.

[thematt]

yep me too thought it would be easier with nurbs actually..:)
maybe you can use this script "NL_morph.mel" that you can find on highend it's based on softbody but it's quite cool and works good.Should work fine with nurbs, but it's a bit different from my script.

cheers

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