Blendshape After Rigging?

[sunlightning]

Hi! I've set up a rig for the first time, bend it to the character,
edited the smooth bind. all works well.

as a second step, i wanna work on the facial expression by
blend shape.

(i duplicated the (whole) character many times & edited the faces)

if i try to combine the skeleton-move & blend shape, the following
happen:

the character goes via blend shape to his first pose. it overrules
the skeleton.

how could i manage that, without binding again?? i know theres a
technic to cut the head from the character, but how the hell
could this work in animation later??

thanks for all hints & tips,

StingRay

[dunkelzahn]

Change the way the inputs for your character are. If you apply blendshapes after your rigging/skinning process, do a RMB and select Inputs->All Inputs and mousedrag your blendshapes so they are applied before your skinning operation.

That should work, good luck.

Chris

[stingray2005]

Thanks, but I've tried what you said. (sorry, 2nd username)
i searched the forum, but didnt find a solution.

the only way it works is to rebind the character after
doing all the blend shape.

sounds easy: saving all weight maps (61 soft bind),
bind the (blendshape-ready)
character to the skeleton & load the weight maps - but
at the loading stage - which file should i select? (one of the
61 tiffs or the other weight file) - i selected the weight file,
but theres no change, the binding has still initize setup.

any idea how to solve that problem??

[joojaa]

Thet would mena you have filldled with connections manualy in wich case you should be peorfactly famimiar with moving the node manualy downstrams in history anyway.

[torigornottorig]

QUOTE(stingray2005 @ 08/25/06, 02:40 AM) [snapback]246122[/snapback]
sounds easy: saving all weight maps (61 soft bind),
bind the (blendshape-ready)
character to the skeleton & load the weight maps - but
at the loading stage - which file should i select? (one of the
61 tiffs or the other weight file) - i selected the weight file,
but theres no change, the binding has still initize setup.

any idea how to solve that problem??

Ha! That's funny..."easy." Sorry, but exporting the weights never works in Maya. I've tried a dozen different ways to do so. But wait, you're not out of luck yet. You can copy the weights from your skinned model to the rebound one. Go back to your file with the correct weights. Select the geometry and rig and then go File->Export Selected. Save as a .ma

Open your file that is ready to have the weights applied to the model. File->Import, select the .ma file you just saved. This imports your model and rig into the scene. Delete the non-deformer history on the mesh you're getting ready to apply the copy to. Select the mesh with the weights and then shift-click and select the mesh you want to copy the weights to. I think the copy skin weights is under the Edit Smooth Skin option under the Skin menu, but I'm not entirely sure because I only have Max right now. It may however be under Polygon->Transfer, so check out both of those. Copying always works so long as all of the verts are identical and have identical numbering, so that saves you from the frustrating fiasco of repainting weights. This also works for UVs too. I know for sure that that is under the Polygon->transfer menu.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(toRigOrNotToRig @ 08/29/06, 11:02 PM) [snapback]246442[/snapback]
Ha! That's funny..."easy." Sorry, but exporting the weights never works in Maya.

What do you mean, works 100% of the time as expected. But yeap people rarely want to use the fimage version of teh copy skinweghts. But its handy nonetheless, its just a different tool than people expect it to be.

Its liek you and me talking of different things just because you dont call something with the name somebody else does, doesnet make it faulty its justa conflict of vocabulary info.