Creating Blend Shapes

[tarno]

hello, I am wanting to know if I can create blend shapes from line drawings? so it looks more like traditional flat animation than 3d in Maya. Also gday to all, this is my first posting...

[jtk77]

you can create blend shapes from any geomtry that shares the same topology..
but , perhaps for what you might want...
lets say you have 2d animations and you want to put them into perspective..
render them out as an image sequence with alpha and map them on planes in 3d.
If thats what you're going for.
Otherwise , yeah blends shapes can be created off any geometry that is the same, as in copletely the same, cv for cv , face for face

[tarno]

More specifically, can I draw (in maya) cartoons (flat like) and then distort the line work using blend shapes from the paint strokes? I'm guessing you can't cos I am not sure that paint strokes are geometry or not....its just a thought - but I'll probably end up having to do this in the traditional way. Maya maybe not the program for it....unless i create the characters in 3d. thanks for response - blankets in the closet? ! ha

[jtk77]

mmhm, no I won't do that sort of thing in maya really. Paint FX strokes can be turned into geometry tubes, but, I don't think you'd get consistant topology.
Yeah, I don't think maya would be your best solution for something like this.
You can, however, model and create your characters like you would any 3d project then render them out to look handrawn or shaded flat. Thats a neat look as well.
Either with Maya 7's toon shaders or with Tomcat Plugins that you can google for.