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RBF Manager and Blendshapes not working

Rigging General
#1

Hello,

i have tried to drive blendshapes with a controller but it doesnt seem to work.

  • I select my controller curve as the driver

  • i select the mesh - then i select the blendshape node in the channel editor (inputs)

then the actual blendshapes dont show up in the driven list - just a bunch of other atributtes

PS - the same workflow works with Ingos "weight driver without problems…

Have you tried it and any idea what i might be missing?

I also would like to know:

if i use the RBF manager to drive several blendshapes with control curves on the rig, and i want to export the animations including blendshapes to Unreal or Unity - will it work if i select the blendshape node in the channel editor and bake that with (bake options/bake selected)?

Gracias!

#2

Hello @david_monteiro

Sorry to hear you having issues with the rbf manager. Lets see what we can do.

From the steps you gave, it doesnt sound like you actually selecting the blendshape node itself. I understand navigating to the blendshape node through the history/channelbox is common practice, but we need to be more literal for the manager to work.

Select the node via either the node editor, or by selecting by searching for its name. No what solution you chose, just made sure its the only thing selected. Then when you add it as a driven object in the rbf manager, you do have a right click option in the attribute list to display different types of nodes.
Keyable
Non keyable
all

I am sure in one of these solutions, you should see the desired attributes.

To your question about exporting. I havent unity available for testing, but the weightDriver is a custom maya node with no support for Unity. And there are no animations curves used by the RBF manager. To achieve this, I think you would have to alter your setup a bit.
(Just a theory)
You would need to create attributes on control on the rig representing every blendshape you would want to control. Connect the control to the blendshape node directly.
Then use the rbf manager to drive those attributes. Upon exporting animation for unity, bake those attributes.

Again that is just a theory, let me know how unity works out.

1 Like
#3

Hello Rafael,

regarding selecting the correct node: i do the exact same steps with Ingos “weight driver” tool and it works. That beeing said, yes i will try selecting the node throught the node editor, and see if that helps.

At the moment i am using Ingos weight driver and he wrote to me, that if i backe the blendshapes, exporting into an Engine should work…

i will test it as soon as possible and let you know how it goes.

Thanks

David