Hi Nicolas:
In this case, unless the meshes need to be unibody for some reason (uv
maps etc.) I would keep them seperate in Maya, it is easier to seperate
weights this way, back them up and restore them seperately should the
need arise.
While the Copy Skin Weights tool in Maya works, I use will use the
AESkinWeights script, it's far more reliable imho and doesn't rely on
UVs like the old tools do.
If the meshes need to be combined, Martin's method will work fine,
although I would add that as far as possible try to only select the
joints that are actually IN the skinCluster before saving out the
weights, will save you a ton of headaches with empty weights and
painting them later :P (do a cmds.skinCluster('skinClusterName', q=True,
inf=True) to query the deformers associated with a skinCluster)
@Emilio: OOTB no. However you have absymmesh right? :) You can use that
to actually restore details from a different topology mesh altogether,
even if the vertex order has changed (which it will in this instance).
So it will be annoying, but what you can do is for every shape in the
old mesh you had, duplicate your new base geo by that amount, and then
take the old blendshapes and use absymmesh to essentially 'project'
their details down to those new target shapes. It's what I used to do
when sculpting corrective blendshapes in ZBrush actually and going back
and forth between Maya.
Yep, obviously not as elegant as the shape manager hehe. But hey, if
you're ever stuck in this situation....at least you can now save the
day! :P
Hope that helps!
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/25/2014 1:32 AM, Nicolas Esposito wrote:
Hi all,
I already asked this question on a Maya forum and I didn't get an
answer basically...
I'm merging together two rigs, one for the head and one for the body.
What I'm doing is parenting the root of the head rig to the neck bone
of the body, then merge the two meshes and transfer the weights (
using the merge PPG ), in order to keep the enveloping on both of them
( and later on a bit of smoothing on the weights ).
This is my simple workflow in Softimage, the main reason is to have a
single mesh with both head+body rigged.
Now I'm translating the same workflow in Maya.
Parenting of the head rig to the body rig not a problem, done.
The problem is when I'm trying to merge and create a unique mesh with
both envelopes...looks like the weights can't be transfered or some
scripting is needed in order to do that....
Well, nothing out of the box allow me to do that in Maya?
If I'm not wrong the merging operator act as GATOR, and I know that
the tool is not available inside Maya, but seriously there's no way to
merge and blend the weights between two meshes?
Sorry to bother you with quesion regarding Maya but looks like here
some of you use both of them so better ask :)
Cheers
Nicolas
