3dsMax Morpher - Vertex Color

fire67

I have two simple boxes with different scale and different vertex colors. I am trying to blend them using the Morpher.
The shapes can be correctly blended but the vertex colors don't change. It uses the base object vertex colors.

How can I blend vertex colors with the morpher ? How can I use blend shapes with blending vertex colors ?

The aim is then to export the object in fbx format and to keep the vertex color blending effect.

Thanks !

Eric Chadwick

I'm pretty sure FBX only stores the vertex position offsets for morph targets, and nothing else.

I had a similar issue a few years ago, trying to use different UVs on a morph target. But Morpher isn't built that way, it only considers vertex positions (IIRC).

You could try to brute-force it, by copying the vertex colors from the target to the base, storing them as a 2nd set of VC, then animating a blend between those in the Material Editor, but obviously this will only work for rendering in Max.

Edit... what is the target software for the FBX file? Would help to know what your end desired result is.

fire67

Hmm that's a bad news I've seen that there's a trick to handle vertex color in blend shapes but I don't know if the values are saved in the FBX.
The target platform is Unity but it seems that it doesn't handle this for the moment.
Do you know were the vertex colors are stored in an ascii FBX file ?

Eric Chadwick

Can't recall offhand. But easy to test. Make a triangle, add a red VC to one vert, export, open the FBX in Notepad, search for 255,0,0 or else 1,0,0.