How To Fix Blender Vertix Movie Far Away

9th Feb 2022 | Rigging

Rig with Shape Keys Like Never Before!

Rigging a character can be washed in a 1000000 different ways, many of which involve using shape keys. In Blender 3.1, a tiny utility part was added, which I believe can benefit many of these workflows and enable the creation of entirely new ones.

While working on the upcoming Snow character rig, I wrote an addition around this new functionality, hither'due south a video that contains everything there is to know about information technology:

Click here for a link to this video only. See the lesser of this page to download the addon.

In this article I go over a bit more than of what this is and why y'all should care if you lot're a rigger!

Electric current Cosmetic Shape Key workflows

Most shape keys are a correction sculpted on top of prior deformation. For example:

The character's elbow is aptitude using an Armature, then a shape key is used for boosted tweaking.
2 facial shape keys look cute on their ain, but when both of them are activated, the issue is terrible. So, you create a 3rd shape key which only activates when both of the previous ones are activated at the same time.

Both of these cases are Corrective Shape Keys; They are merely a Delta added on top of a Deformed Mesh, in order to correct the deformation and create a Beautiful Mesh.

Hither are those states of the mesh visualized with a bent cylinder:

Now, in one case you've sculpted your mesh into its Cute Mesh state, you probably don't want to lose that verbal state. But currently, that state is non stored explicitly anywhere. This means that if you change whatsoever of the data used to go far at that land, you won't arrive at the same state anymore. Here I changed the vertex weights of the cylinder:

This means you can only kickoff working on your cosmetic shape keys one time you are 100% sure that you will not touch on whatever vertex weights, bone constraints, etc any more. If you lot notice out something is broken after having made your correctives, you either fix information technology and re-make all your corrective shape keys, or you just don't fix it. That's pretty bad!

So why not just store the Beautiful Mesh!?

You lot could do this already, but call up, at the end of the day y'all demand to calculate a Delta, which, when added on height of an capricious Deformed Mesh, should upshot in your Beautiful Mesh. So, to summate this Delta, yous simply demand to do some algebra, right?
Delta = Beautiful Mesh - Plain-featured Mesh!
Simply many people who tried this before had to realize that it's not so unproblematic. I won't go into why exactly, only every bit of Blender iii.1, this really IS possible, cheers to CrazySpace being exposed to the Python API.

Then it works! Just how tin can it be used?

Probably in more ways than I tin fifty-fifty think of. Beneath are some workflow examples that the add-on enables.

1. Basic Workflow: Rig commencement, correct deformations afterwards

Save a pose whose deformation you want to correct (eg. Elbow Bend)
Create a shape central and sculpt on it
Salve the resulting Beautiful Mesh
Feel free to make modifications to the vertex weights, bone constraints, etc, to achieve improve interpolation into the pose
Re-employ the saved Cute Mesh, so the combination of your new weights and etc. still combine into the same last shape that you lot had before.

Usage example of the shape key rig workflow using the Snow character. — Usage case of the shape key rig workflow using the Snowfall grapheme.

ii. Reverse Workflow: Sculpt first, rig later

A grapheme artist can sculpt facial expressions to great quality and detail. This can be your Beautiful Mesh.
You lot pose the rig to be as close to this sculpted shape as possible, and create a rig control that blends into this pose using Action Constraints.
You can now create a shape cardinal that will blend into the verbal pose created by the character artist.
(Simply make sure your shape key activates at the same time as the Action Constraints!)
As ever, y'all can change whatever you want in the rig, and you will be able to restore the shape.

three. No bones, merely shape keys

Create a facial rig based entirely on shape keys and corrective shape keys.
Realize that one of the lower level shape keys looks terrible. But there are already 20 other shapes that build on top of this!
No worries, just make your fixes where y'all need to.
When you're washed, you can prepare the other 20 shapes with the click of a button.

A single Pose Key to manage 24 Shape Keys. — A single Pose Cardinal to manage 24 Shape Keys.

4. Author finger correctives 24 at a time

Create a pose where all finger basic (not the thumbs in this example) are bent by xc degrees.
Sculpt the desired fist shape on all the fingers.
Use the unmarried sculpted shape to 24 shape keys with a single click.
(Although you lot nevertheless have to create the vertex group masks and the drivers manually)
You can now tweak and iterate on the sculpted fist shape, since you can however update all 24 shape keys with a single click.

If you've read this far, you should probably check out the video above, where I showcase many of these workflows and features.

Both directions of Neck Tilt Shape Keys are managed by a single Pose Key. — Both directions of Neck Tilt Shape Keys are managed past a unmarried Pose Key.

Maintaining Symmetry

For symmetry, you demand two copies of the aforementioned Shape Key.

If it affects the center-line (eg., Neck Twist):

Enable "Mirror X" option on one of them
When you update the Shape Keys, the one with Mirror Ten enabled will have the corrective deformation mirrored around the X axis.

If it doesn't impact the eye-line (eg. Elbow Curve):

Create vertex groups to mask left/right sides of the mesh.
Mask one Shape Central to each side.
Both Shape Keys shop the deformation of both sides, each of them masked to only affect one side.

Sky'south the limit!

Note though, that this add-on only contains my ideas for how this tech could be used. The core of this whole idea however, is but the power to deform already deformed meshes in a predictable/intuitive way. It'southward the same code that Blender uses to let u.s. sculpt on plain-featured meshes. So, if you lot have ideas for what else this could be used for, and you're an add-on programmer, you lot should attempt to run across what you tin can exercise with information technology!