Post alembic shot sculpt modifier
Hi, I'm thinking it would be a super useful modifier to have with which you can sculpt geometry into place on an imported alembic. Often, no matter how great the rig is, the outcoming animation needs fixing for deformations, muscle definitions, intersections, or simple art directed changes. I tried to setup something like this with Geometry nodes, which could work as such. Here is a used case exapmle: dropbox.com/s/7qxi7z7sb5tzkm8/postSculpt_use_case.mp4 The biggest "inconvenience" here is, that you can't sculpt on the actual object you want to fix, but have to fix a separate reference object and bring the deformation over. Here is what I believe a dedicated modifier, which can be place after i.e. a mesh sequence modifier to achieve those fixes would be amazing.
Cheers, Stefan
8 Comments
Really helpful ，we really need to have a function like blendshpe in maya, do you have .blend , thanks bro!
basically frame for frame sculpting or another ui for a final corrective animated blendshape(s!). maya has this and is one of the big reasons why the hq movies look so great ..
it also eases the pipeline because a lot of wiggle and stuff like that doesnt need to be setup via complicated and cpu consuming bones or unintuitive blendshape keyframes but just intuitively sculpted on top of a finished animation by a capable animator. for facial animation its the bomb as every expression can be fine tuned wit just a few strokes in a minute or less even )
there are two addons (animall and keymesh) which can do keyframe to keyframe vertex animation, maybe driving a blendshape with those as input could be an early prototype for this. just gotta find someone with time to rip the code together.
or maybe the vertex position blending could already be hacked together with geometrynodes (instead of the blendshape) , because then it could be added as a simple modifier behind the armature. and turned on and off shrugs .
Good morning,
I'm thinking less of a frame by frame animation, but rather a tool to fix a chached animation. Almost like attaching a blend shape on top of an alembic. let's say there is an animation and for a few frames you want to make that smile more extreme. Instead of changing the blendshape and corresponding shapes in the rig, adjust the animation, cache out again, it would be easier and more art directed to sculpt this change on top of the existing cache and animate the effect in and out . Hope this makes sense
I'm working on a geometry nodes based setup at the moment: blenderartists.org/t/deform-mesh-along-normal-vector-with-geometry-nodes/1361880/2 need to figure out some deformation issues, and next step would be to create an addon and automate repetitive setups like node creation and linking etc.
are you the same person as op ?
i understand what you mean though.
this can be applied on top of every animated incoming mesh regardless where it comes from, directly from the armature or any other animation modifier or cache.
the "corrective sculpt" must be applied with keyframes of course .. i meant keyframe by keyframe instead of frame by frame too
your nodes setup now is basially a basic blendshhape applyer .
sculpting it directly on top of the working mesh will be the important challenge and feature and where good and fluid workflow is needed.
What is op ?
Ah sorry, I misunderstood you then, with frame by frame, ha. Yeah, right now it really is just a post cache blendshape. That's right now the tedious part really, have to duplicate the mesh at the reference frame with cache modifier applied, duplicate again for the sculpt object, and then apply that delta to the cached object.. Too many steps. Directly sculpting on the cached object is the ultimate goal, but I have absolutely no idea how to achieve that.
take a look at the addons i posted above .. theres a third one called claymation tools or something like that
Hi, Yeah, I know those addons, however they are not exactly what I mean. I updated the main post and added an example video. I am not trying to create a new animation as such, but fixing existing animation
ok i just tested keymesh and it can be combined with armature and even sculpt on top of animation but it doesnt blend the keyframes.. so thats the last bit you gotta program yourself ..
updated version of keymesh is "claymagic"
github.com/aldrinsartfactory/stopmagic