Houdini 22.0 Character KineFX

Blend Shape 2.0

Adds blend shapes with controls to an APEX rig.

Since 21.0

This component adds blend shapes with controls to an APEX rig. To set up blend shapes for this component, add blend shapes to the capture mesh using the Character Blend Shapes Add SOP, and add the capture mesh to the rig. This component then extracts the blend shapes and sets up controls for each blend shape in the mesh. See working with blend shapes for an example of setting up blend shapes and creating custom sliders for this component.

In the viewport, the menu provides configuration options for the blend shape component. See the gear menu for the different types of interaction elements.

Parameters

Name

A unique name for the nodes created by this component.

Settings

Name

Base Skeleton

The skeleton to apply the animation channels to.

Base Shape

The capture mesh to deform.

Bone Deform

The sop::bonedeform node that the blend shape subnet connects to.

Blend Shape

Group

A subset of the input geometry to blend.

Group Type

The type of geometry in the specified Group. If this is not set to Guess from Group, all the geometry in Group must be the indicated type.

Skin Name

The name of the mesh to apply the blend shapes to. When adding blend shapes in the setup process, you need to add a mesh name to associate the blend shapes with the mesh.

Shapes

A list of blend shapes to include in the setup. By default, all the blend shapes are included.

Use OpenCL

When turned on, enables GPU acceleration using OpenCL. When turned off, the CPU path is used.

Sliders

Slider Geo

The geometry in the character folder structure that contains the slider geometry.

Bone Deform Sliders

When turned on, transfers the mesh’s capture weights onto the sliders. Once the mesh’s bone capture attributes have been transferred onto the sliders (for example, using an Attribute Transfer SOP to transfer the boneCapture attribute), the sliders can move along with the mesh.

Deform slider

Size

The first value is the distance between the sliders (if there are multiple sliders). The second value is the length of each slider.

Offset

The slider’s offset from the rig.

Use Screen Space Sliders

When turned on, displays the blend shape sliders in screen space (as a 2D overlay) instead of in the 3D viewport. For a full walkthrough, see screen space sliders.

Toggle between screen space and 3D sliders

Screen Space Sliders

The geometry used to draw the screen space slider curves. This parameter is available when Use Screen Space Sliders is turned on.

Screen Space Pixel Size

The size, in pixels, of the screen space sliders. This parameter is available when Use Screen Space Sliders is turned on.

Background Image

The background image displayed behind the screen space sliders. This parameter is available when Use Screen Space Sliders is turned on.

Background Scale

The scale of the screen space background image. This parameter is available when Use Screen Space Sliders is turned on.

Background Offset

The offset of the screen space background image. This parameter is available when Use Screen Space Sliders is turned on.

Parent

Root

The parent for the blend shape controls. By default, it is set to the parent tag.

Tags

Tags

The tags to add to the slider control nodes (rig::AbstractControl graph nodes).

Shape

The APEX Configure Controls SOP provides more options for changing the look of the controls.

Shape

The shape of the slider controls. It can be set to any of the built-in APEX control shapes.

Color

The color of the slider controls.

Rotate

The rotation of the slider controls.

Scale

The scale of the slider controls.

See also

KineFX

Overview

Preparing character elements

Rigging with APEX graphs

Building rig graphs with APEX Script

Rigging with rig components

Animating in the viewport

Customizing the animate state

SOP-based animation

Deformation

Animation retargeting

Pre-H20

Panes

Appendix