Possible to get deformers to follow blendshape deformation?

[sonictk]

Hi guys, had a rigging question: Basically is it possible to get deformers in XSI to follow along with the mesh as it deforms when Shapes are being applied to it? This would be really useful for facial rigs, especially because it would allow me to sculpt blendshapes for things like mouth phenomes and use those to block in facial shapes first, then use additional deformers on the face to fine-tune the pose.

I made a video demonstrating an example I did in Maya and my attempt to try the same in XSI, unfortunately I get a cycle check error when I try to constrain my control object to a cluster on the mesh. Does anyone know of any rig that has its blendshapes affect the skinned joints' positions as well or any other way to achieve this result in XSI?

[csaez]

Doritos! ;)

[sonictk]

Doritos! ;)

Omg I saw the exact same link from the mailing list but totally didn't think about using webArchive to find the backup, thank you so much! Do you still happen to have the project files from that link or do you know of any free rigs that have such a feature in them, I'd really love to be able to pick those apart as well and see how they did it.

Also I haven't really been keeping up recently but did anyone find out what happened to SI blog? Did it just go the way of XSIBase or something?

[csaez]

Sorry, I don't have the project files
Here's a video from Alan/Miquel further explaining how it works, perhaps this helps!

[sonictk]

Omg it works, thank you so much! I'm still not sure I fully understand why piping the parent's global SRT to the staticKineState works though, because I'm not sure I understand properly the concept of the staticKineState.

If I understand it correctly, normally if I have the normal setup where I have a:

parentNull > childNull; and the parent is constrained to a cluster on the mesh,

when I move the parent I get double transforms on the childNull because it is adding the parentNull's movement along with the cluster's deformation movement as well;

so I am removing that double transform by changing the initial starting offset (staticKineState) of the childNull...is that correct?

[EricTRocks]

That's correct. The statickine property holds the "bind pose" of the deformer or it's position when it is initially enveloped. The offset from this transform is how the envelope operator knows how to move the points for that particular operator.

Driving the static kine by the parent gives you the ability to drive this bind pose continuously with the movement from the blend shape.

[sonictk]

That's correct. The statickine property holds the "bind pose" of the deformer or it's position when it is initially enveloped. The offset from this transform is how the envelope operator knows how to move the points for that particular operator.

Driving the static kine by the parent gives you the ability to drive this bind pose continuously with the movement from the blend shape.

Thank you eric and csaez! Going to try this out and see how it works performance-wise once I have more blendshapes and deformers being used in the scene...