Thursday, November 4, 2021

Troubleshoots for Having Your Blendshapes from ZBrush work on a Hero Head in Maya

 This week while working on my facial rig for the pink haired girl, I ran into an interesting problem.  When importing my blendshapes for my rig I found that the blendshapes imported in pieces when exported as an obj.  This completely breaks my blendshapes when I hook them up to my hero head.  I tried a couple of ways to fix this problem and I'm going to talk about all of them.

To describe the problem I had,  when I originally brought in the blendshapes they were multiple groups.  When I selected the faces to check the the flow of the typology I also found that it was chopped up into pieces.  

Maya 2022 Checking the Edge Flow on Blendshape

When I tried to attach the blendshape to the head and manipulated it, Half of the head cripples.

Maya 2022 Crippled Blendshape


After doing some research I found three ways to fix this for exporting from Zbrush, if that doesn't work then there are a few things to check in maya. 

The first setting I would check is your export settings.  Turning off group and turning on Qud, Txr, and Mrg.

ZBrush Export Settings

Besides looking in your tools, you can actually look for solutions in the Zplugin tab.  Exporting your blendshapes as an FBX also fixes the problem.  

ZBrush FBX Import/Export

Another cool way to export is to use the blendshape exporter Zbrush has built in.  It is also in the ZPlugin.  It saves a lot of time since it does export all the blendshapes and then opens them all in a maya scene.  I have found that it looks like it works.  Always make sure on your actual rigging head that it is actually working.  

ZBrush Blendshapes Export

Another setting I have heard of but haven't looked into is the Polygroups setting in your tools if these options do not work.  
For connecting your blendshapes to the head in Maya if exporting is not the issue is to check:
  • Frozen Transformations
  • Deleted History
  • Check to make sure your heads are the same because blendshapes move based on vertices points.  If the verticie points do not match up it will break the blendshapes.  

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