i have nothing against the api!
Its a bit uneneccesery! It seems wierd but if you make a blendshape out of a body with 100,0000 polys and then make a blendshape copy of it adjust the face make acopy adjust second face....
Then when you convert it to a blendshape with delete targets on (YOU allways want to do this by the way! Even if you want to adjust shapes later... you can allways reconnect those shapes only later), maya only uses memory for those vertices that have actualy changed. So theres no bigger files produced than with a transfer plugin.
Also if hide the rest of the body from theese objects and youll never notice the extra data is there.
So adjust your workflow so tyhat you make copies of the entire bodies in a separate file just in case you need to go back to the blendshape. Then collapse the blendshaape save again. NOw if you need to modify the result then just collapse the thing again from a ablendshape and replace the new blend node ith the old one. And it is bound and ready to go (cleanup the extra nodes away). then you have no problems.
The only thing this does not do is make intermediary save file sizes smaller, and loadtimes on them, but with hidden faces operational speed is as fast. And ofcourse the real workfiles are as afast as ever.
SECOND
the blend area could be separated entirely then working on that and connecting it to the rest of the body down the line in history.
THIRD
Wraps are very fast if theres direct point orrespondence and they dont need to go looking and interpolation, even faster in 6.5. But as siaid tehyr onluy slow whan your interpolating stuff soeo with right settings youy will notice allmost no speed penalty, as a bonusside yyou get a a modell wherer you can hide the body and have the face as proxy. with the boneproxy object for best feedback times.
FOURTH
the data could bee fed to the plugs trough mel in any order. NO biggie but this is better done in api as it becomes a bit slow. Reorganazing is a bit of pain but not so much is you device anode that just feeds the data in different order to the blend and dont actualy reorganize the mesh at all.
FIFTH
Blennds can operate on sets, just dont check tropology. And as long as the set mebers ar in the same order blend will work, now for this youd need a plugin for convinience. HOwever it is totaly possible to do this with exsisting maya tools too. Again thsi si a bit unneccesery as the bend node takes care of this anyway.
