I've been tinkering with APEX a lot lately.
With kind help from many people, i've created the following setup:

till now, I have understood the following:
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I start with a mesh, & a 'Skeleton' with Joints.
Then i weight paint.
Then i connect a 'rig pose' node & create a pose. This pose will be used as a blendshape later. ok.

Now i connect all three (mesh, skeleton, rigpose) to a 'pack folder' node.
in Attributes, i input the mesh as .shp', 'Skeleton' as .skel, and 'rig pose' node as .skel as well.

Then i create Auto rig component with 'FK Transform'

Then i create Auto rig component with 'Bone deform' node

now i connect 'unpack folder'. then 'edit graph'

in the APEX subgraph, in the 'parms' node, i have inputs for mesh.shp, default skeleton.skel and rig pose.skel

***** i dont know what to do next****

i can search for skeleton blend, aka sop::kinefx::skeletonblend::3.0, but
i dont have knowledge about any of this stuff......

i also want to know how to create an 'abstract control' to drive 'nblends' of skeleton blend as well.

Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFbaRI6paIQ [www.youtube.com]
in the above video, i 'show' my current kinefx setup with 'skeleton blend'

i don't know how to replicate it in APEX.

I'm not a rigger. Just a hobbyist.
Hopefully, Some kind soul will Come up with Solution for This. Thanks.

Hi there, here is a file showing how to set up skeleton blendshapes in apex.
hope this helps.

I have just done this in a simple edit graph, so you can get a better idea of what it needs to look like.

A Million Thanks to William for helping out.............You're the GOAT.....

I've attached another way of going about it, based on Will's Chicken and Lucha rigs.

@william_harley what I'm using here is the blendshape method, where you treat the points like geometry and while looping through each joint. Is there a benefit to using the skeleton blend over the blendshape node?

Max Rose
I've attached another way of going about it, based on Will's Chicken and Lucha rigs.

@william_harley what I'm using here is the blendshape method, where you treat the points like geometry and while looping through each joint. Is there a benefit to using the skeleton blend over the blendshape node?

Technically the skeleton blend is pretty much doing exactly what I was doing in the chicken and luchador setup. The big difference is the pre setup. With the skeleton blend you don't have to worry about managing the skeletons like I did, you can simply add them to the folders and plug them in and it will work.

Whats nice about apex, is that you are not limited to using specific tools to achieve a task. You should feel free to get creative with building your setups. I do think some tools are better for specific tasks, and the skeleton blend has been developed specifically for this and should preform better.

william_harley
Technically the skeleton blend is pretty much doing exactly what I was doing in the chicken and luchador setup. The big difference is the pre setup. With the skeleton blend you don't have to worry about managing the skeletons like I did, you can simply add them to the folders and plug them in and it will work.

If that's the case then awesome. The setup I have for skeletal blendshapes is mind-numbing.

Hi there, big fan of both of you guys.

I was able to recreate both setups you uploaded successfully.
I have tried to apply the setup from Max in a simplified eye lid setup.. and it worked (attached JointBased_blendshapes_lid_test_01.hiplc)

However when i tried to apply the rig components to the whole character, in this case hand pose to make a fist (attached F_rig_v13_export_2.zip), the transforms are not applied properly. The fingers get stretched down.

Would you please be able to look at my file?

Peter Vanek
However when i tried to apply the rig components to the whole character, in this case hand pose to make a fist (attached F_rig_v13_export_2.zip), the transforms are not applied properly. The fingers get stretched down.

Would you please be able to look at my file?

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Hi Peter.
You are computing the local transform after isolating the fingers. The joint transform is the (local transform)*(parent transform). The problem here is that you have removed the parent of all your knuckles, the hand joint. Because there is no parent the origin will be used as the parent transform. This is why you are getting weird transforms.

What you can do is to either keep the hand joint as part of the blend or simply move the deletejoints9 node to be the last operation on that chain. So pose your hand, compute the transforms and then delete the joints.

Thank you very much William that fixed it.