Blend Shapes from Maya To MotionBuilder

#1

Hi,

I know if I had a head and created the fifteen blendshapes for general facial characterization (or similarly the set for phonemes), MotionBuilder will set that all up in a jiffy.
But I am running into the obvious problem and I haven’t been able to track down a tutorial or post on it.

Usually I made a model. And then I extract the head and copy it for blendshapes . Make blendshapes and then recombine and merge vertices. Then if I don’t delete history from this point I have a single polygon model that I can attach to skeleton and so on.

I suspect Motionbuilder can allow this. I suspose I could just have the two polygon parts remain disconnected and attached to the skeleton although the seam will probably show.

So the simple question is. How do I setup facial blendshapes on a full bodied model for export to MotionBuilder?

#2

It’s been about 3 years since I’ve done it but I had to keep all my targets, in Maya, before exporting. You don’t collapse it otherwise you’re shapes don’t appear in the properties of your selected mesh.

This may have changed, however, since then.

#3

Yes, you still cannot delete the blendshape copies. The help docs say to parent them to the original body.

But my question refers to the original parts. In other words is it absolutely necessary for the head to remain disconnected from the rest of the body?

#4

So ,

I spent the morning going through the entire seven pages of forum archives for motionbuilder. And I ran into this same question about three times. And in every case there was no response.

I am beginning to believe the only way I can do this is to duplicate the entire body for the blendshapes.

IS there anyone else out there reading this that actually uses a full character walking around And Talking?

#5

to answer your question…i have full body blendshapes, it wasn’t intentional that they were brought in. i wasn’t really interested in it but I happened to stumble upon it. i just hide all the body blendshapes in Maya then export into MB where they remain hidden. the head isnt disconnected from the body, but i see it on the generic characters in MB, so maybe it’s just another way of doing it? hope that helps…

#6

Hi,

You wrote that you have full body blendshapes and later that the head is connected.

These things have to be so exact…

I wanted to do the regular blendshape method to my full body. That was take off the head. Copy it…change these copies …and apply blendshape deformers to these-- connecting them to the first head. Then the regular tack is to simply recombine the body and head and merge the connected vertices. And never delete history from here . I then think the logical thing to do is just export all to motionbuilder. When I do that. My blendshapes don’t hide in motionbuilder and I couldn’t find them in the general characteristics for faces when I tried Characterizing.

So I’ll assume that you did all that I did (meaning removing the head and reattaching it). And I COULD hide the heads before import. I do think I am assuming that if I see them in motionbuilder then motionbuilder isn’t accepting them as blendshapes. So I will go back and look extra close. Because maybe it is that simple that it is working but not hiding them and I just need to connect them properly.

I suspose you don’t remember how the nodes were layed out?

(for instance I believe that on top is a null node which contains two subnodes- the skeleton and the other is the skin. When you disconnect and reconnect there are the nodes that cannot be “history deleted” . How did these fall into the node heirearchy?)

#7

I can take a look and maybe give you a screen shot if you would like. The thing is i stumbled upon them by accident as i mentioned, so the only thing i am certain of is that the bodies were still present. it looks like they just duplicated the body over and over and modeled out whatever it is they needed to do and called it a blendshape. No chopping of heads and re-attaching was noticed. I can give you more info tomorrow when i am at work…i’m on the westcoast too.
I think your trying to get the blendshapes in so you can use audio to drive them? I have tried it and spent some time on it. My critique is if it’s really that important and you have alot of time then go for it. It’s not the greatest thing if you just wanna throw some audio and its done. There are other programs that can do that, which are not that expensive. We chose not to use that feature because it isn’t that great. That’s just my experience with it, maybe there are others that feel it’s the best thing since sliced bread, I dunno.

#8

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