topic Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes in Maya Animation and Rigging Forum

Driver controls to Blendshapes

kuchel9VJHN — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 23:43:56 GMT

I would like to use interactive controls of an existing character model and create Blendshapes for various facilities expressions and phonemes.

However, when I manipulate the controls and create a new blendshape target, the changes are not saved after finishing editing of the Blendshapes target.

Can someone help?

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 01:11:01 GMT

Are you trying to move your curve within the blendshape? If that's the case, you'll need to use a set driven key. You set a translate value of your control curve as the driver, and your blendshape as the driven. (To select the blendshape right-click on it in the shape menu and select the blendshape node.)

Hope that helps!

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

kuchel9VJHN — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 01:37:29 GMT

Thanks for your reply.

It is probably an unusual workflow. I got this character with a functioning driven key for mouth control. I can manipulate the mouth shape with this driven control. To bring various mouth shaped into Unity, I would like to create Blendshapes. Unity does not work directly with the driven key UI, but requires Blendshapes.

But a Blendshape target does not reflect the changes I make with the driven key control.

Not sure if this makes sense. I posted a short screencast on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/329248851 for demonstration.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 01:49:17 GMT

Hmmm. I'm not sure exactly how Unity handles things, but the target you made in the video is empty. In order for your target to do things, you would need to sculpt the mesh to your desired shape while in edit mode. To my knowledge, I don't think targets can control curves.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

kuchel9VJHN — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 02:08:30 GMT

Can I use the driven controls to manipulate the mesh and then "freeze" its mesh vertices. If I do this a few times, on duplicates of the original mesh, I should be able to use those as Blendshapes.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 02:14:14 GMT

That should work. You may even be able to do it all on the same mesh if you're only exporting the mesh to unity.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

kuchel9VJHN — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 03:01:24 GMT

Can you please tell me how I "freeze" a mesh after manipulating with the driven key controls.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 03:16:11 GMT

You can set keys on your shape targets and then export the mesh as an obj, fbx, alembic cache etc. If I'm understanding your process correctly, you just need seperate meshes to import into unity? In theory this should work. Though FBX tends to have problems with blendshapes. Admittedly, I'm not familiar enough with that pipeline in unity to say exactly what you would need.

Re: Driver controls to Blendshapes

kuchel9VJHN — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 03:40:24 GMT

Unity works well with fbx, usually the Blendshapes are embedded in a single fbx.

I'll give it a go, thx.