blendShapes moving

[slinker]

Sorry, this has probably come up before but I am having a problem with a blendShape. I have ensured all settings are correct. The geometry has all history removed. I am creating it locally and not globally. All hierarchies are in the right order..

but....

When I create a blend shape, the base head moves back to the position of the target shape.

Any help would be good, I am going to check out the graph editor to see if it plots translates, but I don't see why it should

[sonymng420]

It might be your input connections list. Give this a shot:

Select your master shape (The one the blend shapes are applied to) and right click to bring up the options. Under Inputs, go to "Complete List..."

Now, I am assuming your character has joints and is bound, which causes your symptoms.

The list that appears should look like :

Blend Shape (blendShape1)
Skin Cluster (skinCluster1)
Tweak (tweak1)

Ignore the tweak. Our beef is with the first two. What they are are deformation controllers. They tell Maya which deformations to do first, and which to do last (going from bottom to top). So each action is evaluated seperately, and in order. What is happening is that your joints are deforming your object, but then your blendshape node (the one on top) is overriding these deformations to achieve its goal. Simply grab the Blend Shape item in the list, and bring it below Skin Cluster item. What this will do is tell Maya to first calculate the appearance of the Blend shape, and THEN apply the joint deformations.

You should notice an immediate change in the reactions of your model. Hope this helps!

[djfluid]

i had this problem awhile ago but the solution was different than the ones mentioned. what happened to me was the i stupidliy created my blendshapes at different cooridinates in space. therefore each head had there own 0.0.0 coordinates. i then had to stack them on top of one another (precisely) and freeze transformations. hope this helps

[sonymng420]

DJ,
You probably created the blend shape globally, not locally. I never make my blend shapes in the precise location as the original. Most tutorials instruct you to space them out like books on a shelf for easier viewing, so location isn't usually an obstacle.

[kepeli]

Had the same problem myself recently. Changing the order of the inputs didn't help me either. The only solution I found was to make a huge stack of blend shapes before skinning. You don't have to modify the blend shapes before skinning, just have them ready.

This still leaves the problem or wanting additional blend shapes after skinning, if you've forgotten a certain position. I believe that there is some command to add blend shapes to existing ones, or something like that. Anyone know what this is?

Anyway, if you can be bothered, remove the skinning and create loads of dummy blends, re-skin and then edit the blends whenever you need them. Should work fine.

Stuart.