Problem Applying Blend Shapes After Binding?

[adroit]

Hi. I'm wondering if anyone can help me with this little problem.

I've got a character model that I've spend hours binding and weight painting and rigging and it all looks great. Now I'm moving on to creating facial blend shapes.

Ok, so, I've got a whole pile of blend shapes for all the different mouth shapes, and I've got another whole pile of blend shapes for eye shapes. I want to apply all the mouth shapes as one set of blend shapes and then apply the eye shapes as a second set of blend shapes (this way all my mouth shapes will appear in one column in the blend shape window and all the eye shapes will appear on another column).

The problem is that, in order for the blend shapes to apply properly to an already bound character, I need to apply the blend shapes with the "Deformation Order" attribute set to "Front of Chain". This works great for the first set of blend shapes, but with the second set of blend shapes it turns out that they over-ride the first set of blend shapes. In other words, if I drag up one of the mouth shape sliders the mouth looks fine, but then if I drag up one of the eye shape sliders the mouth returns to its default shape even though the slider is still up, so the eye shape over-rides the mouth shape.

The only way I seem to be able to get both sets of blend shapes to work together in perfect harmony is to have them both applied with the Deformation Order attribute set to "Parallel", but then when I move my character around in the scene the blend shapes all go nuts.

I have read the Maya Help files and have tried what it says about right-clicking on the object, going to Inputs > All Inputs and then MMB-draging the deformations order around, but it won't let me do that.
When I do this, the "List of Input Operations" window lists everything in the order:

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

I understand that "Skin Cluster(skinCluster1)" needs to be moved to the top of the list above "Blend Shape(parallelBlender)", but it can't be done! If I MMB drag "Skin Cluster(skinCluster1)" upwards on top of "Blend Shape(parallelBlender)" nothing happens and I get a warning message saying "parallelBlender and skinCluster1 are already in the specified order". On the other hand, if I MMB drag "Blend Shape(parallelBlender)" down onto "Skin Cluster(skinCluster1)" to try and swap them around that way, it seems to completely delete the entire history on my base shape! Everything in the "List of input operations" window disappears, the base shade jumps back to it's original undeformed shape and becomes unbound from the skeleton!

I have tried this with Maya 7, 8 and 8.5 on both Windows PC and Mac OSX, and it's the same every time.

Please, can anyone out there help me solve this problem???

Any help anyone can give me will be hugely appreciated.

Thanks.

[joojaa]

You cant allways reorder stuff in that list it depends on how your network looks. But yes 90% of time you can middledrag stuff in that list. However also 90% of time you cant reorder all of them so try pushing it back one item at time topmost to second and so on.

Yes its a bit wonky control so trying to drag something upwards works much worse than moving something downwards. Mainly because whatever you drag gets inserted after whatever you drag it on.

Collapse happens probably because your blend shape is preferring to have clean history because of its settings. So first try to move tweak first in chain. (the main problem with your setup is that the blend is even before the tweak at the moment)

When all else fails, and this happens a lot because the chain might have branched graph the history in hyperGraph and connect them manually in place. (you need to know how to do thsi anyway so...) Besides its far more flexible anyway (you could even add/remove blendshapes to individual blendsShape nodes ater the fact thsiway)

[adroit]

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah, I think the problem is that I'm wanting to use 2 sets of blend shapes using a Parallel deformation order. If I use Default or Front of Chain all I get is the "Blend Shape(blendShape1)" and "Blend Shape(blendShape2)" nodes and I don't get that "Blend Shape(parallelBlender)" node. In that case everything moves around in the deformation order just fine. It's moving that parallelBlender node that's freaking everything out.

Perhaps I do need to create a small test rig with the Blend Shapes applied before binding and then carefully study the Hypershade connections to see how they should be and then attempt to recreate the same connections with my character. I did have a brief look at that option but the Hypershade just looked like a birds nest! :-/

[torigornottorig]

I think the easiest, and quickest way to fix your problem is to detach the skin with History

Under the animation menu, Skin-->Detach Skin-->Option Box. Make sure "Keep History" is selected and then click "Detach." This saves all your skin weights.

Apply your blend shapes.

Then re-skin your character by selecting all the joints you want and going to the Skin-->Smooth Bind-->Option Box. Make sure all of your settings are correct. Click "Bind Skin."

This re-skins your character using all of the information from the old skin node. It keeps all of your weights and everything. I've found this is necessary more often than it should be, if you're editing the mesh in any way, shape, or form after binding.

Hope this helps!
--toRigOrNotToRig

[joojaa]

Naah learn to use the hyper graph editor. Far easier in the long run:

rearange.mov (~10 megs)
Note this allways succeeds as its also always just what you want, your kindoff forcing the issue on maya.

Ps yes i fumbled a bit there but hey its free if i was sane id charge you guys

Just one thing theres actually no use in having 2 blend shapes after eachother they might as well be one blend shape and that is what i expect mayas doing for you.

[mid1701]

Jooja can you please show me how you rearrange your blendshapes using the hypergraph? I clicked on your rearange.mov and the link is not found. I'm having tremendous amount of trouble adding a second blendshape to my rig. (I'm trying to use a corrective blendshape to have a smoother looking bend on my limbs)