I’m seeing the same results you are. If MorphBlender and Flex would work together it would allow for a lot of creative powerful solutions but as it is now. . . its a bit of a dead end. 
flex won't play nice with morph - any ideas?
Wegg
#2
JoeCosman
#4
add your morph targets to the flex effect, process after transformations, Source uses transformed points, and target uses transformed points.
-JoeC
dobermunk
#6
Thanks, Joe. I’ll try that and post later - have some pesky appointments first. Sounds logical, even if the “process after trans” should work on its own.
David
dobermunk
#7
Thanks to Joe I’ve got the effect I want. I have to say its not very intuitive to have to apply the curve effect to all the morphs, even if it does have its logic. What threw me off most is that this is not necessary when the deforming effect is a bone. Thanks, Wegg for checking it out…
Again, the solution is to apply the flex effect to each of the morph target objects (see inset at top). I also killed all polys to keep size down - learned that from Marek.
After that, just apply the “process after transform” and set source and target to transformed. No idea what compare does, I see no effect when changing these…
dobermunk
#8
Alex has an incredibly useful displacement hack up at his blog. I was exploring this before Joe posted the solution.
dobermunk
#9
THought I’d show what I’m working on. Here’s one of the main characters in my film, enter stage left. Book it as a walk cycle and the opening shot at the same time. THe rig is the first flex-only rig. The problems I encountered above are from the second rig. In all there will be ~ 5 rigs for different situations.
Enough talk, here’s the preview(non-render).
Wegg
#10
Very very cool. Thats one of the things I love about Messiah. Something like this would be so insainly complext to set up in other packages. A programmer would have to get involved. Great job.
dobermunk
#11
Yeah. I agree. I feel empowered - I mean, I encountered a few problems and the effect interaction could be designed a bit more intuitevly, but I managed a fairly complex rig within 2 days. And felt like an artist the whole time - by this I mean, I would just try things out and then delete things that went wrong. The software was very forgiving.
messiah, of course, could also use some more intuitive polish (and I feel the curves could be much more powerful than they are now with comparitively little effort) but its already there if someone like myself can rig like this.
dobermunk
#13
Thanks DMack. I’m tied up with an illustration this weekend but I’ll update asap with a demo of the other rig. (Found one oversight to correct and need to animate the features 
)
Leebre
#14
That looks really nice dobermunk. At one point it looks like the worm-thingy is “panting” from exertion; don’t know if that was intented or not…but it’s cool. You said this rig is flex only, correct?
dobermunk
#15
Yeah - flex only. A further rig is flex and morphs.
Flex is really quite powerful.
Thanks for the critique, too. Yeah, the panting is intentional.
dobermunk
#16
As folk like Kursad are sharing their projects, I thought I’d refresh this thread with a rough animation for the film I’m working on. IRC users will already know it…
I’ve been asked if this is scripted anything… I can’t script. This is the flex effector, out of the box. Certain settings are important. I’ll try to do a brief overview and post over the weekend…
Here’s sh01_11:
fishhead
#17
Well, I dunno really what your weird little leech really has on its mind - but I really dig it! 
It has a fleshy feel already that surely lets it stand out - looks like a very very interesting project. 
Kudos to you - looks like you are putting tons of effort into it and it looks like its paying off!
Nichod
#21
Yeah I remember you posting that. It was also neat to see it develop. Lots of great discussion on IRC. I love the movement of the leech.