With the Paint
Blend Shape Weights Tool, you can use a Maya® Artisan™ brush to paint blend shape weights on your
base shapes.
This lets you set blend
shape weights on a per vertex basis; giving you a finer amount of
control over the amounts of influence your target shapes have on their
base shapes. This tool also lets you paint the blend shape weights
for each target, and lets you create ‘partial’ targets and target
mixing.
You can also use the Mirror
Deformer Weights Options to mirror blend shape deformer
weights. See
Mirror deformer weights.
When you paint blend
shape weights, you can also do the following:
- Create a new target shape from the painted
base shape.
See
To create a new target shape from the painted base shape.
- Import or export blend shape weight maps.
Blend shape weight maps
let you map attribute values onto base shape surface vertices relative
to the UVs. With imported blend shape weight maps, tool settings
are applied to the base shape vertices using the mapped values.
To produce good import/export results, make sure that your base
shapes have good UVs.
See
To import a blend shape weight map and
To export a blend shape weight map.
To paint blend shape weights
- Select your blend shape deformer’s base
shape in the scene view.
- Open the Blend Shape Editor
by selecting
Window >
Animation Editors > Blend Shape.
The Blend
Shape editor appears.
- In the Blend Shape editor,
select the slider for the target shape whose weights you want to
paint and drag it to a value of 1.
The target shape now
has 100% influence over the base shape’s topology. The base shape
deforms to reflect the target shape’s topology.
- Select
Edit Deformers > Paint Blend Shape Weights Tool > .
The Paint
Blend Shape Weights Tool settings open in the Tool
Settings editor. See
Paint Blend Shape Weights Tool Settings.
- In the Brush section, adjust the Opacity setting
as required.
- In the Target section,
select the target shape whose weights you want to paint on the base
shape from the list of targets. This is the same target shape whose
weight you set to 1 in the Blend Shape editor.
- In the Paint Weights section,
adjust the Value and Paint
Operation tool settings and paint the selected target’s
weights on its base shape to create the deformations you desire.
By default, your base
shape is flooded with a Value of
1.
A Value of
1 (full influence) appears as white painted
weights and a Value of 0 (no influence) appears
as black painted weights. All other Value settings
appear as different shades of gray.
TipTurn off Color
Feedback and Show Wireframe in
the Display section of the Paint
Blend Shape Weights Tool settings to better see the results
of the painted blend shape weights on the base shape.
- Key the blend shape weights you just
painted. See the following procedure.
- Repeat steps 3-7 with your other target
shapes to create additional deformation effects.
To animate painted blend shape weights
- Do
one of the following:
To create a new target shape from the
painted base shape
- Follow the steps in the previous procedure
until you have created a deformation that you want to save as a
new target shape.
- Select your deformed base shape.
- Select
Edit > Duplicate.
A copy of your deformed
base shape appears over your base shape.
- Select the Move Tool and
drag the copy of your deformed base shape away from the original
base shape.
- Rename the copy of the deformed base
shape using the naming conventions of your current target shapes.
- Select the copy of the deformed base
shape and then -click the
original base shape.
- Select
Edit Deformers > Blend Shape > Add.
The copy of the deformed
base shape you created is added as a new target shape to your blend
shape deformation.
To export a blend shape weight map
- Paint your blend shape weights on your base
shape until you obtain the deformation or look that you
want to export as a map.
- Select your painted base shape.
- In the tool settings, open the Attribute
Maps section and then the Export section.
- Set the Export settings
and then click the Export button. For descriptions of
the Export settings, see
Paint Blend Shape Weights Tool Settings.
The Export browser
window appears.
- Browse to the location to which you want
to save the map, specify a name for the map, and then click Export.
By default, Maya will place your map in the sourceimages folder
of your current project.
Your base shape’s current
deformations are saved out as an attribute map.
To import a blend shape weight map
- Select your deformed base shape.
- In the Paint Blend Shape Weights
tool settings, open the Attribute Maps section
and then the Import section.
- Set the Import settings
and then click the Import button. For descriptions of
the Import settings, see
Paint Blend Shape Weights Tool Settings.
The Import browser
window appears.
- Browse to the location where the map
you want to import resides, select the map file, and then click Import.
Your base shape deforms
according to the tool settings specified by the imported attribute
map.