Blendshapes or Endomporphs

I was wondering whether NVil supported the equivalent of Blendshapes (Maya) or Endomorphs (Lightwave). Thanks for any info.

I am not sure what exactly they are. But I don't think we have it.

The closest in NVIL would be "Copy Shape" if that function had the ability to have stepping/interpolation between the 2 shapes.

Here's a video that shows the usefulness of using Endomorphs. Something to think about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGpU0ahwJA8

What happens to the morphs if you change the topology of the mesh?

The point order has to be the same from morph to morph. So, if the topology or rearrangement of vertices, edges or polys occurred, it would destroy the morphs.

Such sets of stored vertex positions (that's what Morph-Targets essentially are) could be useful with not only character animation in mind. One could store several geometric extremes and interpolate between them with sliders to find an ideal shape or simply store various versions of the same model within just one mesh. Character- animators call these poses, but one was not just limited to CA. But one of course also wanted to export them so that one could use them elsewhere. It seems that the .obj format can store these though.

Done.

Hi IStonia, I'm wondering if you might find it worthwhile to look at actually
developing an 'applink' capability for Messiah itself.

I've been hesitant to buy and invest the learning time into NVil/Voidworld because I
still get enough utility out of Silo (and Maya, when Silo crashes or fails to
do all I need), but I think having NVil able to directly link up with Messiah
(as one example-> send mesh to Messiah, rig mesh with bones in Messiah,
adjust 'pose' of mesh, send back to NVil, tweak, repeat) would be the time-saver
that would force me to jump in and learn NVil. 

No idea if it's worth it in terms of new sales (dunno how big the active Messiah
community is these days) but hopefully, and maybe some other Messiah users can
add supoort to this idea, you can look into it and see if it's viable to you...

While I'm not against this one had to consider that the situation is quite different from Applinks to 3DCoat or also Zbrush. Both firms have made it quite convenient to create a connection to their program, including Installer and all. If Istonia decided to do the same for Messiah he needed to do everything himself, for a program which gets used by very few people in comparison.

On another note: How does the Blendshape implementation work now?
Can one only save states but can not blend between them from within Nvil?

really he already has the clipboard system, which scripts for any other app can be made to work with. for example i got it as a 1 button thing to send stuff over to maya now, and any app with a scripting interface or api it would be easy to do the same with.

really just supporting a few more file formates would be great, like fbx and alembic format

On another note: How does the Blendshape implementation work now?
Can one only save states but can not blend between them from within Nvil?

The morph tool in NVIL gives similar results as shown in the video(linked) above (posted) by chikega. I tested the tool on the first 2 examples shown in that video, the plane and the head morphing, and worked as expected.

The morph tool in NVIL gives similar results as shown in the video(linked) above (posted) by chikega. I tested the tool on the first 2 examples shown in that video, the plane and the head morphing, and worked as expected.

Thanks Steve, unfortunately I did not understand /get not to work the overall proposed workflow in Nvil. It looks to me that this Brush is intended to work along the lines of Morph Brush in Zbrush (as a tool which allows for local transfer of vertex-position through interpolation). But has also a method been introduced to blend globally between two states of the same model? I think of saving model state A and B and a slider for the tranfer between those.

But has also a method been introduced to blend globally between two states of the same model? I think of saving model state A and B and a slider for the tranfer between those.

Yes, but you need to bring up the tweak tool option UI.
Either click on "Apply", OR, enable option "Use cursor to apply" and LMB+Drag to morph between the 2.



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Thanks Steve,
looking at Help file or Changelog did not give me a clue where to find this. I did not even know that this hidden sculpting workspace was available in the program. Still I did not figure out how this works.
Save State 1, state 2 and blend. Easy as pie elsewhere. Without any doubt there's many many smart options available in Nvil. But implementations and logical links of what to find where and under what circumstances are so convoluted and so far away from the way I think that I often lose interest before reaching the goal.