Connect attribute value with two different state nodes

[jimmyjimjim]

Hi everyone. As a junior rigger / animator I am currently working on a facial rig and faced a probably basic issue but cannot find the answer on the internet so here I am.

I am working on the eyelids and used a script to earn time and have a nice blink for the eyes, the blink was input in an attr “blink”, but then I’ve been working on the inverse state : opening of the eyelids, that I first input in a second attr “open eyelids”.

Then I found it was stupid to have them on separated attr, so I’m basically trying to simply have only one attr “eyelids” based on 3 values (0 / 1 / 2) or ( -1 / 0 / 1 ) where 0 would be the basic eyelid position, -1 the blink and 1 the opening of the eyelid. Knowing that the blink and the openEyelid are in a 0 - 1 range ( 0 = no effect, 1 = 100% effective )

I succeeded doing so with the Condition node, but realized that it was a boolean switch, what I need is the right utility node to progressively open or close my eyelids, if anyone have a solution.

Here is a picture of my actual node editor.

I tried to play with the setRange and remapValue utilities but I couldn’t find much information on the internet as they seem to be mostly use for other purpose.

I also tried to use the driven keys but unfortunately, as my eyelids positions are set with my node editor, as soon as I set a driven key it break the connections and avoid me to get the position of the other ones.

As it seems pretty basic issue for a rig, I hope anyone here can share a solution to do it through the node editor.

Could there be a float condition node ?

Thank you in advance !

[jimmyjimjim]

Well, I finally found the long version solution ! So in case someone would have the same issue, here is my final node editor set up to control blink and opening of the up and low eyelids with a 0 / 1 / 2 range.

As you can see I left the 4 attributes I first made and connected my main attributes to them through several math manipulations. Then I hid them in the channel box to control them with the main attributes only (Eyelid Up and Eyelid Low).

I just wish there was a float condition utility to reduce the number of nodes for this pretty basic trick and even though I found out there actually was a float condition node in Maya 2020, I couldn’t find any informations about how it work while it didn’t have the same parameters as the original condition node, I guess it doesn’t have the same function.

Here is how it looks like if anyone wants to add information about it.