Keying Painted Blend Shape Weights locks the tool (Maya 2017)

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm trying to animate painted blend shape weights, so I can perform a complex deformation non-uniformly. Painting weights for selected blendshape targets works perfectly fine, but once I key the selected target weights, painting becomes completely locked for that target. This makes it impossible to animate the painted blend shape weights which used to work fine.

When I created an empty scene and tested this, I ran across the same problem. I even tested 2016 EXT 2, it appears as though the feature was messed up with the implementation of the new shape editor.

Any ideas would be great. I really need this feature to function. Thanks

[santd]

Hello @Anonymous,

Thank you for posting to the Area forums.

I understand that you are experiencing and issue in which you used to be able to key the painted weights of a blendshape object to make more precise deformations.

Would you be able to tell me the process you are going through to do this? I have tested in Maya 2017 and in previous versions and can't seem to get it to work no matter the version I try. Please provide me steps on replicating this and I can continue to help you out.

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Hi David,

I appreciate you looking into this. I have not personally tried animating blend shape painted weights before this project. When referencing a Digital Tutors/ Pluralsight video; making adjustments to painted weights after setting a key appeared to work and would allow the animation of painted weights. In the video, it appears as though he can just continue to paint after setting the weight key without any additional steps. The version of Maya used in this video is 2012:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/lesson/12344-Set-Blend-Shape-Target-Weight-Keys

It appears as though though painted blend shape weights are supposed to be animatable according to this help page, so I wasn't sure if there was a setting or step I was missing:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-950716A4-19CF-4C14-96F1-FD6B4D48663C

I actually have been able to animate the per-vertex blend weight, by setting multiple paint weight keys, and then adjusting the keys in the graph editor. This workaround is extremely innacurate, and does not allow the full effect that I need unfortunately. (I attatched an image file showing how I adjusted the keys below)

Thank you,

danclarkwcp

[santd · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

Thank you for providing me that information. A couple of times I tested this and I was able to replicate the lock, this had to do with me painting on the incorrect target. Should be painting on the target with the name of the target object. Painting on the blendshape of the current object will cause a lock up do to the order of operations. Be sure that you are painting on the correct target. I recorded the following video to show how I was able to get it to work:

Cheers,