ld_mirrorMe tool demo

Just made a quick demo for one of my 3 main toolsets, (ld_animateMe v2, ld_rigMe v1 and ld_mirrorMe v.9.5) the ld_mirrorMe tool, something I started a while ago but put off.



This demo primarily shows mirroring on objects from world 0, but everything is calculated from worldspace and works accordingly, it doesn't matter where it is or what its connected/parented to, the mirror will work as expected.

Details:
3 modes - Curve, Mesh and Cluster (at present),
 - Curve - Primarily for mirroring nurbs curves for controllers, Mesh - Primarily for mirroring blendshapes (can mirror multiple targets at the same time), and Cluster - (developing for other deformers), given a deformer and its mesh will mirror the deformer over giving a correctly mirrored pivot and origin based on the objects pivot.
Search and replace feature,
Choose mirror axis,
Choose new objects position,
World based - will work wherever or whatever the targets connected to,
Entries retained, no need to keep adding same object of multiple copies needed,
Simple to use.

This was initially going to just be a tool for my rigging UI (ld_rigMe), but I prefer having it separate.

Any ideas/comments welcome.

Correctional blendshapes

I always had nightmares creating correctional blendshapes for rigs, having to work on the duplicated default mesh whilst watching the result mesh update (still trying to get over how I ever did this on a single 15" monitor...),

and then I found out how blendshape weights aren't limited from 0 to 1... and less than 0.

Now creating correctional blendshapes is far more enjoyable and takes up much less time, using a very simple setup.

Its actually very basic math (the way I see it anyways)

a + b = c

which therefore means...

b = c - a

so if "a" was a pose, "b" was its correction, and "c" the result of both. Now if you take the pose away from the result, your left with... the correction!

Corrective blendshape wise, you need to put your character into its pose you want to correct,

duplicate the mesh and create the correction ("b"),

duplicate the mesh orginal mesh off again (to get "a")

Then you duplicate the mesh with no deformations on it (as you would creating a normal blendshape), and assign the pose mesh and the corrective mesh ("a" + "b"). You finally want to turn on the correction blend weight to 1, and the pose blend weight to -1.

Your then left with just the correction, which you duplicate off and apply as a corrective blendshape target for you character.

This can be taken so much further to do live pose updates (above is all automated), but I wont go into that yet.

I hope this helps!

Blendshapes

Grr, sodding blendshapes in Maya, forgot how to creat in-betweens so started playing about and wrote it down. Finding it really helpful nowdays im getting old...

"Adding in-between blendshapes

To create inbetween blendshapes for say opening an eyelid you'll want an in-between to get a nice slide over the eyeball instead of going through it,
this is because Maya will transition between the base and the blend through the shortest route.

Select your ending blendshape and then shift-select your Base object (that the blends will be applied to).

If its your first blendshape on this object you'll wanna go ''Create Deformers - Create Blendshape - Options', name the group of blendshapes under the
'Blendshape node', make sure envelope is 1, local origin and check topology (should all be Defaults anyway) and create.

If its not then go 'Edit Deformers - Blendshape - Add - Options and select 'Specify node' with the correct node selected and check topology. ('Add in-between
should NOT be checked at this point). Click 'Apply and close'.

You'll notice under 'Window - Animation Editors - Blendshape you'll have a new node you created and if you slide up, your object will transition
between your original object to the object you set as a blendshape.

To add a blendshape in-between the two states you created, create and mold the object for the in-between, select it, shift-select the base object
then select 'Edit Deformers - Blendshape - Add - Options', click 'specify node' (it tells Maya what node this will be placed under)

then select 'Add in-between target' and under the 'in-between weight' select something like 0.5, and under 'Target index' you need to count
what blendshape this will be placed on, for example if the in-between will be on the 1st blendshape you made you need to type '1',
if its blendshape later down the list, count how many over it is and type its corresponding placement number. (you could always re-name your
blendshape objects before you add them as eg. '1_R_TopEyelid', '2_R_BotEyelid' etc.

if you now slide you blendshape, you'll notice the inbetween has been placed at the value you selected (0.5)."

Hope peeps find some of the stuff I post useful...