Maya Animation :: How To Create Blend Shape Deformer
Jul 10, 2011
So I was in the midst of making blend-shapes for an animated wizards staff, but one leaf wouldn't deform like the rest.
I know I selected the vertices properly when altering it, but every time I try to create a blend shape deformer I get the error "Error:// no deformable object selected.
I have a scene with an object with multiple blend shape targets. I'm not using custom attributes to control these targets (since doing that makes the Blend Shape Editor nonfunctional). I'm just directly changing the value in the channel box's 'Input' section, under 'blendShape1'. By typing in the number directly, I can get it to work with any number I want, but if I try the Maya Cntrl-drag method to interactively change the number, I'm stuck between values of 0 and 1. Is there any way to change the min and max of these attributes? Its strange that I can type in whatever I want and it will work, but cntrl-dragging does not work that way.
I'm rigging a character for use in Maya 2011, which I'm not all too familiar with - How would I link the blend shape states for 2 objects, so when I increase the value of one blend shape for one object, it increases the value for another blend shape for another object?
I have a blend shape for the mouth open position & I need the teeth & tongue open blends to match as the value increases.
In 3DS Max I'd use the reaction manager - is there something similar for Maya?
I'm trying to use the wrap deformer on an old rig (made with The Setup Machine 2 - non-joint influences). The new geometry I created has blendshapes applied to it. The problem I'm having is that anytime I change my blendshape values and even when just keying a value, I have to wait about 5 minutes before I can do anything else in Maya. Once I have placed just one key, any movement on the timeline has me waiting again. I cannot work like this at all, and goodness knows how it's going to affect batch render time.
Is there any workaround that doesn't involve me skinning my new geometry? I'm working on a tight deadline and I really can't waste any time.
How to successfully import/export deformer weights ?
Like, a simple head made out of clusters on Left side. Would like to create/mirror these clusters to the other side. NONE of the default tools worked for me. Mirror deformer weights didn't and neither did the import/export deformer weights.
so i know if you want two blend shapes to happen at the same time they have to be in the same node.but what if i want 2 separate nodes? say: one for body shape, one for face shape a blink, and an inflated belly, that i want to happen at the same time? I don't want it to be all in one node, but 1 cancels out the other depending on the order.
I have a rigged object and I would like to add a blend shape to this rig. Now my blend shape is not for morph animation rather it is for manipulating the original geometry. Put it this way, I modified the original object and I would like to put this new shape in place without changing my rig, or transferring weights or bones. I presume that best would be to put this before the rig deformer so that the bone deformer works on top of it? I am not sure how I should handle or approach this.
I have a rigged human character with many corrective blend shapes, which sometimes overwrite each other. For example, the corrective blend shape on the finger, when activated, "un-does" the corrective blend shape on the elbow, when both the finger and the elbow are bent.
I have tried the input editor, and can change which blend shapes overwrite what other blend shapes, but they still overwrite each other.
My next step is to try and paint the areas which the blend shape affects (stop the finger blend shape from being applied to the elbow). However, when accessing the "Paint Blend Shape Weights" tool, most of the target blends do not appear in the list. Two target blends do appear, but the two which appear are seemingly random and have nothing that sets them apart from the other blend shapes which do not appear.
When creating new blend shapes from the same base mesh, the new blend shapes also do not not appear in the target blend list.
When attempting to duplicate the problem (with several cubes), the issue is not present.
How to prevent the blend shapes from overwriting each other, or how to fix the issue with the targets not appearing in the paint blend shape weights list? Attached is a screen grab of some of my blend shapes visible in the blend shape editor on the right, and them not being present in the paint blend shapes weights list on the left.
How can I change the range at which blend shapes are created? In other words, blend shapes are created with ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. How could I change it to, for example, -0.4 to 4 without using a custom attribute?
I'm aware I can type -0.4 or 4 in a blend shape target. However, that will mutiply the effect which is not desirable.
I have run into an issue relating to the differences in the way Mudbox and Maya subdivide meshes. My workflow for creating blend shapes is as follows:
1. Create base head mesh in Maya 2. Import base head mesh into Mudbox and subdivide to level 2 3. Create a Mudbox layer on top of base head mesh to sculpt each blend shape (e.g., browsMidUp) 4. For each blend shape, export the level 0 mesh to Maya for use as a blend shape on the base head mesh
Here is where it all falls apart.
When I smooth the blend shape in Maya (either by choosing smooth preview or by selecting Mesh>Smooth), the smoothed mesh in Maya differs from that in Mudbox. In the case of browsMidUp, the blend shape created in Mudbox only modified the brows. However, in Maya when the blend shape is smoothed the mouth opens up (i.e., the lips smooth differently in Maya than Mudbox, causing the mouth to open).
This is incredibly frustrating because I did not discover this problem until after I created approximately 35 blend shapes in Mudbox!I believe I can work around my current error. However, I would like to know how others approach the creation of blend shapes.Do you use Mudbox? If so, how do prevent issues associated with smoothing differences?
I've recently upgraded from Maya 7 (32-bit Windows XP) to Maya 2010 (64-bit Windows XP). In Maya 7, I used corrective blend shapes to fine tune skin deformations by the bones of a character's skeleton. I used Parallel blending, and it all worked very nicely.
I've been trying to do exactly the same thing in Maya 2010, and it works fine with the character in its default 'T' position. If I then try to pose the character, the corrections become progressively worse the more extreme the pose.
I'm using the same technique as I did in Maya 7, so I'm wondering if something has broken.
I want to rig a face for animating. (not for a game). and I can't figure out which is better and why: having all joints, and those joints driving parts of the face.. or just making blend shapes for all expressions like smile, angry, sad etc....
I know blend shapes won't work for games, but I'm planning to do mmo's anyways so I'll never need a complicated joint setup for faces... but as far as film, what works better?
I'd like a more intuitive way to set up UV maps in Maya. It seems to me that there should be a process similar to using low polygon models as wrap deformers. Basically I figure that the low polygon would act as a projection wrap allowing for less UVs to adjust but enabling a very good flow of the texture map around any polygon, subdivision, and NURBS model of any complexity. Is there such a thing? If not, is there a way I can convert a wrap deformer to be a UV projection object?
I am creating a shape that looks like a pill a rectangle with two circles on the ends, if you will. But it's all one shape. I want a gradient or blend (what exactly is the differnce?) that has a white middle and dark gray edges. The white goes along the pill horizontally but the dark gray is above and below this white "line" but the rounded edges of the pill shape are the dark gray. I'm using CS6.
I am modeling a (simplified) human brain. I have used paint effects to draw its surface and afterwards I converted them to polygons ( Actually I used this tutorial URL.... ). Is there a possible way to convert these tube - like polygons to rectungular shapes? I want in a future step to make an animation where the brains topology transforms to walls and corridors.
I've been getting my hands on a few models from different games (Such as the Spy from 'Team Fortress 2', and Mario from 'Super Smash Brothers Brawl') lately, all of which are already weighted properly... So I can simply apply IK's and begin animating in a matter of minutes...
However, I can't set up any of them with a HIK rig (To use with Motion Capture..).. I keep getting an "Invalid skeleton or no skeleton. Can't create new rig." error when trying to Create the HIK Rig (I can Characterize the skeleton with no problem though). I know that the mesh is binded already to the skeleton using skin clusters..
I have a question about the ikHandle. When I create the ikHandle with the ikSCSolver, the handle is “L” shaped. Does the direction the lower portion of the “L” points towards, indicate the first axis of rotation order? Or does it mean something else?
how to create a skeleton for just a simple cylinder. I use the joint tool and create the joint in the end, in the middle, in the other end. I use the smooth bind to bind the skin with the skeleton, and then ik handle tool selecting the both end joints. But when i move the ik handle the object will not bend even though the skeleton is bending. I can only point the cylinder in the direction i want it.
To create an animation similar to the one shown in the page 225, in the tutorial, I created a curve but I am not too sure that was the correct way to create it.
1. Selected the Surfaces Menu.
2. In the font view, using the CV Curve Tool, created the first half.
3. Using Duplicate in the Edit Menu, I created the other half.
4. In the Edit Curves Menu, selected Attach Curves and connected two curves.
5. I, then selected the Animation Menu and created an object to be used as an aircraft and followed the same steps shown in the tutorial and it worked nicely.
How to create a Human IK control rig from a pre-made skeleton? I have matched the hierarchy and naming conventions of the pre-made skeleton to the that of the Human IK Skeleton Generator, but I keep getting an error that says, "Invalid skeleton or no skeleton. Can't create new rig."
Can even gotten the Create Rig function to work? If so, how did you set up your skeleton?
I am doing some animations involving sine waves, and I can make an expression that controls the translation of an object such that it travels along the path of a sine wave, but I can't figure out how to dynamically create an editable sine wave curve.
Is there a way to have Maya generate a curve based upon the path that an object travels upon?
For instance I have a sphere that is moving along the X axis with time, and also moving up and down on the Z axis back and forth. I would like to make an editable curve object of this path of motion.
I can see in Maya 2012 we will have motion trails where we can see the actual path an object is moving along, and that we will be able to interact with this path to alter the animation, but what if we could take that path and make it an actual curve or NURBS object?
i have been using the drivenTime node to create walkcycles that follow motion path curves where the out time is connected to some attribute via a unitToTimeCOnversion node.in previous version of Maya.
When i try to connect anything to the Out Time of new drivenTime node the connection never works, not even keyframes?
I have rigged a character and made it into a character set in which i have locked the scaling attribute , I have then saved this file. I have then referenced this file and and have done a walk cycle animation and saved this file. I have then realised that I needed the scaling attribute when I have added other parts of my scene. Is there a way to unlock the scaling attribute in my walk cycle animation file or will i have to go back and change it in the rigged file, create a new character set and do the walk cycle animation again?
My current scene has 10 animation layers for a character, and seeing every f-curve from all layers, although grey and locked, when I only need to see the f-curves in layer I'm working on is really cluttering the graph editor. My current work around is selecting my active layer in the Layer Editor every time I select a rig control. Simple enough, but a pretty inefficient way of working. I can't seem to find a setting that allows me to just see ONLY the fcurves in the active layer. I imagine some of you out there may have hundreds of animations for a single game character.
I'm trying to animate a moving rope based on simulation data. I know how to import my motion data for individual objects.I've seen lots of tutorials where one uses simulations or soft bodies with IK in order to create a rope. how to use all these features and I want the rope to follow my coordinates exactly. I was hoping I could do something like the following:
1. create points in Maya which correspond to my data points 2. connect the points with a curve 3. loft a circle using the curve as a path in order to make a rope 4. move the points. due to History, the rope position is updated
Is there a way to do something like this in Maya? I've tried, and it looks like ep points do not have key-able channel data, so I can't create animations for them separately. I'm using .mov data file imports to generate x, y, and z motion keys for the points.
I have an assignment for a class where part of the final project is detailing the construction of a mold for a part. The animation that I would like to do would show the build up of the part in a 3D printer layer by layer. The closest method of animating this that I can think of is unfortunately backwards.
As I would have the part and a camera facing up from the bottom of the part and would have a plane that would recede upwards in the y direction. This would reveal the part as the plane translates in the y direction.
This might be okay, but the problem is that I would like to show this from a camera on top facing down instead of a camera on bottom facing up. How I can create the look of a part being built up in this additive method?