Blendshape Names in a Reference chain

#1

Hi, I’ve encountered a problem and I can’t figure out what to do. The issue is that my blendshapes sliders are being renamed and NOT following the names of the geometry to which they refer. This is affecting the downstream portion of my pipeline which is basically FBX export to Unreal Engine.

Anyway, lets stay with the Maya problem first: I have a character MESH file. Inside the MESH file is the character model and a bunch of blend shapes (smile, eyes-up, etc) to control the facial expression.

I reference the MESH into a RIG file. In here I bind the mesh to the rig and set up the blendShape node. It is from this RIG file that I need to spit out a FBX export.

Thing is, for various FBX/Unreal reasons I HAVE to create the blendShape node inside the RIG file. But, when I do the sliders get the wrong names. Instead of being called “Smile” and “eyes-up”, they get called “Weight[0]” “Weight[1]” etc.

Without manually renaming everything how do I get the blendShape node to name the sliders properly i.e. after the underlying object.

This problem only appears when blendShapes are wired up after a reference has been set up. Creating the blendShape node in the native MESH file works fine, so it seems to be a problem over a reference chain. Unfortunately FBX/Unreal demands that I do it the ‘broken’ way.

Any ideas?

Barry

#2

SOLVED (Kind of)

It was to do with the namespaces assigned to the geometry when it was referenced. I used a namespace-removal script and the blendShape problem went away.

#3

I’d like to understand your solution, but I don’t. How can you remove the namespace from a referenced mesh? I did not think it was possible.

David

#4

I think the main problem is referencing the mesh into the rig file. Don’t do that, you will get some nasty unexpected results doing that. It’s ok to have the mesh and blendshapes part of the rig file. Say you want the rig file lighter, you can just get rid of the blendShapes and what not and save it as rig_Master.ma

Hope that helps some.

-Tim

#5

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