Blendshapes for xGEN Fur - transfer the vertex ID? Does it work?
polycounter lvl 2
Hi there community! 
I'm doing a character that has a hairsystem (xGEN) and should have a rigging setup with facial rig and blendshapes.
Since it's a kinda animal the whole body is one single mesh. For obvious reasons, I didn't want to copy the whole mesh every single time for each blendshape, so I used the technique to only use part of the mesh as explained here:
Summary: you can't just copy the mesh and then delete everything you don't need like some hippie, because SURPRISE! That would make your life easier, and Maya isn't having that.
I'm not going to summarize all steps, but you need to do specific steps in a certain order like a Nazi, because otherwise the VERTEX IDS from the Target Mesh and the blendshape mesh will be different rendering your blendshapes worthless.
(I needed like an hour to make this even work, because you need to merge the vertices afterwards BY HAND otherwise it will be a fuck up again, which they didn't mention in the video)
Now to my main question: What do I do about my fur geo!?
Will it follow the blendshapes after that specific case of seperating meshes and vertex ID madness? Is there a way to transfer vertex IDs?
Right now I'm at a crossroad where I don't wanna continue because I don't know if it will be a fuckup.
I'm the last person who is annoyed if she did something "for nothing" I like to learn from my mistakes, however, working for 20+ hours to no avail would kind of bum me out
So my question is:
What would be the best thing to do in my situation?
Would "just copy the whole mesh for this project" be the best thing to do?
For future reference, how should I handle such a case professionally?
How did they do it in "Zootopia" or "Pets"? (Hopefully without some sort of super advanced research Pixar team that just constantly makes awesome software they rarely use!! -____-)
How to successfully combine great facial animation/blendshapes with hair systems?
(They surely don't copy the whole bodymesh for the facial blendshapes!?)
I'd be delighted if someone could help me!
Thanks a ton!!
All the best
I'm doing a character that has a hairsystem (xGEN) and should have a rigging setup with facial rig and blendshapes.
Since it's a kinda animal the whole body is one single mesh. For obvious reasons, I didn't want to copy the whole mesh every single time for each blendshape, so I used the technique to only use part of the mesh as explained here:
Summary: you can't just copy the mesh and then delete everything you don't need like some hippie, because SURPRISE! That would make your life easier, and Maya isn't having that.
I'm not going to summarize all steps, but you need to do specific steps in a certain order like a Nazi, because otherwise the VERTEX IDS from the Target Mesh and the blendshape mesh will be different rendering your blendshapes worthless.
(I needed like an hour to make this even work, because you need to merge the vertices afterwards BY HAND otherwise it will be a fuck up again, which they didn't mention in the video)
Now to my main question: What do I do about my fur geo!?
Will it follow the blendshapes after that specific case of seperating meshes and vertex ID madness? Is there a way to transfer vertex IDs?
Right now I'm at a crossroad where I don't wanna continue because I don't know if it will be a fuckup.
I'm the last person who is annoyed if she did something "for nothing" I like to learn from my mistakes, however, working for 20+ hours to no avail would kind of bum me out
So my question is:
What would be the best thing to do in my situation?
Would "just copy the whole mesh for this project" be the best thing to do?
For future reference, how should I handle such a case professionally?
How did they do it in "Zootopia" or "Pets"? (Hopefully without some sort of super advanced research Pixar team that just constantly makes awesome software they rarely use!! -____-)
How to successfully combine great facial animation/blendshapes with hair systems?
(They surely don't copy the whole bodymesh for the facial blendshapes!?)
I'd be delighted if someone could help me!
Thanks a ton!!
All the best
Replies
OH MY GOD, now I feel stupid - I've even learned this, albeit very briefly and sort of "long" ago - it seems I've just been watching too old tutorials and totally forgot about this!
How very embarrassing. Thanks a LOT for pointing that out to me though!
OMG, that just really made my day! Thanks
Have a good one!