Maya 2018 - Is it possible to smooth preview to polygons without loosing blendshapes?

#1

I created this figure, it has 7K Polygons, then pressed 3 for smoothing my mesh, this mesh its really complex to rigg because of its uncomon shape, it took me like a month just to fix weights and in many cases i couldn´t do it just by weight fixing and had to do it with Pose editor wich creates automatic blendshapes for specific pose, this works perfect in Maya but now i need to send my mesh to another software… and i cant send it with preview, it did worked when my figure wasn´t binded, i sent it at 7K with 3 key to smooth it worked perfect, but after rigging exporting wont allowe preview option anymore, so i had to convert my mesh using smooth mesh preview to polygons…then, all my blendshapes got ruined, after converting is done if i try to rotate a hand for example, the hole figure gets destroyed.

I understand that blendshapes now have a diferent topology than the new mesh, but having a way to still use the old blendshapes will help not to waist time remaking the again.

In my case i had to redo everything again, so is there way to use blendshapes on converted figures? maybe converting each blendshape too? in my scenery pose editor did not created duplicated meshes for creating blendshapes for pose interpolators.

Thanks

#2

There are seveal points in your post which are very unclear. Let’s take the first point because it seems to be the source of all evil:
Everything worked fine until you had to export your geometry for another software. I do not understand what: “and i cant send it with preview” means.
Which preview?
What exactly do you need to export in which format?

#3

OK, i understand

usually when working in maya, its way better to press 3 key and smooth meshes, and work with a 7K polys than a 35K polys per mesh, specially when you do dynamics and for testing animations in large scenes, so i love how by just press 3 key you can smooth and look a previewed version of your model with more subdvisions without having heavy poly counts or if my scene is so large and Maya can´t handle well large poly counts, it never has, i normally work with scenes that have millions of polys and suddenly Maya just crashes, then 3 key its awesome! and also layers help a lot by hiding most objects, In Zbrush i can work objects arround 16 Million polys without any problem but…well thats another subject.

Then when i required to export that same mesh in FBX, including rigg and blendshapes, then for me export works great as long as my mesh is not binded, even if my figure is not converted, if my mesh has 7K poly i can export my figure like if it had 23K polys without converting anything, meaning including the 3key smooth edges effect, but as soon as i bind and rigg i cant, when i export my 7K poly figure with its preview polys been 23K and i open my mesh in other software all i see is squares (my 7K mesh without smooth edges) then if i send figures that don´t have any bind awesome, all my figures get exported even with 3key effect “smooth previewed mesh”, the problem is that now that i finished my 7K poly figure, it has a rigg and pose editor interpolators for fixing weight issues, when i exported to any software i cannot received it smoothed like i could when it wasn´t binded, it sends me the original mesh without preview mode “3 Key”.

For me, no problem, i select that mesh and click: modify/ convert/ smooth mesh preview to polygons, this works perfect, but, now i lost all my blendshapes since they dont correspond to a 23K figure but a 7K figure, so i lost all my pose interpolators… even if i slightly rotate like an arm of my model, the hole model gets destroyed because of the blendshapes, then i have to delete all blendshapes in pose editor; i do understand this has to be the way, poly count its different from my new converted mesh, but: is there a way not to loose all blendshapes? pose editor actually never created new meshes for those new blendshapes, it just saved new poses and used shapes in some auto mode, but maybe i can convert all my blendshapes the same way, some how without having to lose another month to recreate all blendshapes.

My mesh seems simple by its poly count been low, but it has almost 100 pose editor blendshapes triggered by pose interpolators, because it doesn´t rotate each boddy part in a regular fashion, then i required interpolators and they depend on blendshapes. I dont know if this sounds confusing, let me know.

Thanks

#4

Oh, that’s hard. I wonder that exporting such a complex setup as fbx works at all. In this case I have no idea how to solve it. Can’t you smooth it in the other software?

#5

I already tried, the other software it´s UE4, that was my first idea when started testing different export settings and none worked, that didn´t worked either, Unreal guys told me i had to convert first in Maya and then export… that was sad news cause i did can export in preview mode before binding, so i did that test before thinking this was going to work latter but it didn´t.