BlendShape, Wrap deformer, the best work-Flow

#1

hello

It 's been a long time since I used blend shape but I wonder what is the best work_flow.

I have a character, smoothly skinned and properly weighted.

what do I need to create Blend shapes for the Head?

I detach the head at the edges near shoulders and create blend shapes for it then make a wrap deformer for another head and etc?

but using this method I lose the integrity between skinned edges you know … because it is not a single mesh so there would be a seam .

sorry … but I need a tutorial for this… I think I 'v lost my share on this…

thank you in advance

#2

Hi…!
Assuming that the head and body is fused… You can:-

  1. Select the face and extract the head area alone.
  2. Duplicate the head alone.
  3. Merge the body and head.
  4. Use the extracted head part to create your blendShape.
  5. Apply to the Head and Body fused mesh.
  6. Put your blendShape below the skinCluster in the Input

Try…!

Rgds,

#3

thank you

for step 5 , I should apply the extracted mesh with blend shape to the original head , that is fine for now…
but animated skeleton moved the target and the wrap deformer shape doesn’t move with the skeleton… so
I need to skin the extracted mesh to the skeleton , right?
i wish I could find a detailed tutorial on this

#4

There’s no need for a wrap deformer at all. After you’ve extracted and duplicated the head, select the original head mesh FIRST and then the body mesh SECOND and “combine”. Then merge the verts, the vert order will remain the same on the head geo that way. Then select the duplicated head, and select the original mesh and apply blendshape. You can then duplicate the head mesh again as many times as you need for the blends, making sure that you set the “blendshapename” to 1 for the blend going into the original mesh. Again, no need for a wrap deformer for this stuff.

#5

I guess the workflow you had in mind is something like this:

  1. Duplicate the faces of the head into a new head model, leaving the original head-faces attached to the body.
  2. The new head wil be your controlhead. Leave it in place (eaxactly over the one on the body) and duplicate it multiple times to create your blendshapes.
  3. Plug these blenshapes back in to your controlhead so the control head will deform properly.
  4. Finally you can let the controlhead - with the connected blendshapes - drive the entire body by using it as the base of a wrap modifier.

You might have to figure out the order of your inputs if you have any other active deformers on your mesh.

Hope this helps…

#6

yes It works now

but two questions please

  1. in Input section I need to bring the blend shape under the skinCluster right?
    if so, gives error because the combined mesh is renamed and …

2 . setingt the “blendshapename” to 1 is just for ordering purposes … are they?

#7

Rename the mesh and see if that works. Sorry didn’t understand the second question.

#8

you are way over thinking this… you can do blendshapes between selection sets …

so on the full body mesh select the verts you want to morph and create a selection set

then duplicate the full body mesh and delete the verts or faces you don’t need… edit the mesh shape then make another selection set. You can then make a blendshape between the selection sets.

As long as the vert order and count is the same between the sets this works great

#9

I can’t figure out how to do that… could you give a hint. :wink:

#10

select two sets and then make a blendshape? To make a set, select verts then go to Create>Sets and make a set… then select both in the right order to do the normal thing to make a blendshape and make a blendshape

#11

creating Blend Shapes between Selection sets, That is something I didn’t know :slight_smile:

I entirely revised the scene and found out a few helpful things … please correct me if I’m wrong :

the whole body skinned character :
Method 1:

  • first extract the face area , duplicate it , create a blend shape between these two then combine the original head with the rest of the body and merge it .
  • then duplicate the extracted head as many times as necessary and make a blend shapes .

actually this caused me reordering inputs issues and didn’t work … by any means…

Method 2:

  • creating selection set and deleting extra faces … changes the vertex number…
    It deforms , and doesn’t have the ordering input problem ( blend shape the skincluster) but since the Number of vertexes change…It deforms incorrectly .

but I thought combination of these two and wrap deformer might work… here is what I did and it worked out

  • I duplicated the original mesh ( full body) and make a blend shape between two.
    ( I reordered the input connections as well )
  • without deleting the faces I just duplicated the face area and made a wrap deformer with it .
  • now , time to create blend shapes with the duplicated one and finally it worked
    no issues …:slight_smile:

well for future projects I certainly will pick a straight line , I mean I will create blend shapes for the head first and then skinning and merging stuff… that is safe you know

thank you again… for your great support

#12

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