Maya blend shape editor and .fbx export

[bsanchez3d]

Hello all, hope you can help with this...

So I've created a complete character rig for export to Unity 5.  The head has several blend shapes attached to it.  I've used the blend shape editor to mask out areas of the head to not be affected by the blends (the eyeballs and eyelids specifically).  When I export to .fbx the blends come over just fine, however the masks don't carry over so the eyeballs and eyelids end up being affected by the blend shape targets.  I was wondering if there was a check box or some other option that would export the masks with the .fbx or if it was just not possible in this format?  The blend shapes are all being controlled via script in Unity (the shapes adjust the head based on user input - character customization basically) and aren't keyed animation.  Trying to troubleshoot and see if there's a way to keep the mask info intact on export and import into Unity.  If anyone knows then that would be great!  Even if I'm just SOL.  It's a matter of rebuilding a bunch of things, or hopefully some sort of export option/checkbox/setting.  Please help.  Thank you!

B3D

[jordan.giboney · Accepted solution]

Hi @bsanchez3d

Thanks for posting! I've done some testing and additional research and have confirmed that this behavior is in fact a defect and I have logged it internally. Thank you for bringing it to our attention 🙂 

I also talked to my contacts in Development and we discovered a workaround: 

they can select the target with a mask, make sure it's the only one influencing the base object (weight: 1.0 while all other weights are at 0), and in the Create menu of the Shape Editor choose: "Add Selection as Target" (the user needs to make sure the object is selected - that's the "selection" being referred to by the menu item). that's of course if the user doesn't care about losing the mask, but retaining its effects.

FYI: deleting history would remove the targets too, so it wouldn't quite be the same. it's kinda like selecting a few layers in photoshop and flattening them. so it's still flattened to a specific layer, but the specific layer information is gone

[bsanchez3d]

Awesome, Jordan!

Thanks so much for the response.  I ended up rebuilding the rig to fix the problem.  Ultimately the rig is leaner and cleaner so it was probably for the best; but it's good to know that it was an unseen issue!  Thanks again, I'll pass this info on since I had hit up some of my colleagues for their thoughts.

[jordan.giboney]

Happy to help! 🙂 

If anything else comes up please feel free to post again, I would be happy to help. Best of luck with your project!!

[Anonymous]

I am also interested in a solution to this bug; hopefully it can get get fixed. I am using Maya 2018 though.

I've also noticed two other bugs?? related to using the blendshape editor:

1. Sometimes masking won't show where you are painting and sometimes it does; I don't know if this is affected by using a material other than one for maya software (as opposed to an arnold material for instance), but I have noticed that it works best on the mesh's lowest level of detail.

2. when naming Blendshapes in the editor, hitting Shift to capitalize something (if using camel case) immediately takes you out of the editor and sometimes it doesn't.

[bsanchez3d]

That's interesting.  I'm currently using Maya 2016 to match the version that my client is using so I can't say I've run into the specific problems you've mentioned.  I'll keep an eye out though, you may want to escalate this into a direct forum thread, since it may get overlooked if it's here.  Let me know if you find any workarounds or solutions.  I'll probably be switching to Maya 2018 in the new year, so it'd be good to know!!