Can anyone help me out here?I'm pretty much a rookie when it comes to using Blender.I'm trying to create a shapekey to control the action of a mesh.Essentially, it's the rotation of a blade from a closed position to an open position using a bone.I has to be a bone and not a simple mesh transformation as this model is for use in a game.I've tried using a simple mesh transformation and instead of rotating, the blade scales down to zero then inverts into the desired position.If the main armature is posed, a similar thing happens, except the mesh moves to the position I specified.The attached picture shows the closed position of the blade.
And this picture shows the position it needs to be in its open state.
>>609969>>609970try and make a shapekey with the blade half open and then fully open from that half open shape key.Shapekeys animate with the shortest, so if you had a ball to bounce to the side if you just had a shapekey take the shortest route to the side in straight line without ever going up. You can think of it as keyframing in tween animation. You just need to add a middle pose to redirect how the shapekey goes from 0 to 1
>>609975Do you mean set a shape key for just the mesh?I've tried that, and it works only if I intend to NOT move the arm.Since the arm is rigged and moves, the blade has to move in relation to the arm.Thats why the shapekey has to control the bone, and not the mesh.
>>609969First things first. Shape keys are boneless mesh deformations. Animation keyframes are for bones. What you need is a basic set of animation keyframes for the bone that makes the blade rotate. If you try to use shapekeys you'll fail because they do exactly what you don't want to do.Set your frame to 0, pose the bone in its closed position, press I to add a keyframe. Then set your frame to something like 10, post the bone in its open position, and add another keyframe. Check if it interpolates correctly. If it doesn't, you can pose and add an extra keyframe in the middle as the halfway point
>>609977I need a shapekey translation because the game this model is going into uses shapekeys to perform animations and gestures.That keyframe method works to animate the blade, but how do I now set that as a shapekey?
If it makes it clearer, I'm making an avatar for VRChat, and the only way to get custom animations and actions is by using shapekeys.
>>609991You keep misunderstanding what anons wrote to you.Make 2 shapekeys one has a base of closed blade and it's job is to open the blade halfway.the other shapekey's base is the first shape key
>>609995Well, for some reason now, I can't even move my mesh after creating the shapekeys.Im seriously about to put my fist through my monitor.
>>609998is it because you are in edit mode, and not in pose mode?I'm just guessing because you didn't give much information.How new are you to all this? Maybe you should have watched more tutorials. It seems like you want to tackle a too advanced job.
Ok, I can move the mesh now. I had apply shape keys in edit on.>>609995No, I do understand that instruction.And although it seems like a solution, I can't have two separate shapekeys for one action.>>610000I've been using blender for about a year. But I've never made any animated features before.I started this project 12 hours ago now and I've been on it for the entire time.I imported the posed mesh.Separated the groups of vertices into separate meshs.Made an armature and parented all of the parts.Created intermediary bones so that some movements result in secondary movements.And I have been looking at tutorials and help sites for the past 4 hours to see what I'm doing wrong.And so far they've all been 20 minute long videos voiced by people who either breathe into the mic, go to fast, are too fucking quiet or loud Hispanics who have shitty music that drowns out their instructions.So don't fucking tell me I haven't watched enough tutorials.
>>610004I didn't mean to insult you, just saying that even thou you may know how to do other things, you may need to watch more shape key tutorials.You say you cannot have 2 seperate shape keys for one action, but they wouldn't be sepearate, because you would change the base of the 2nd key to be the 1st shape key.You need to have something that can tell the shape key to take a "detour" from the shortest route from 0 to 1 influence. That extra shape key in mid point of your ideal movement is that "detour".I don't know how limited is VRchat.If you had a blade sliding out instead of rotating you wouldn't have this problem, because it's just one movement in straight line.Because you have a rotation thou, blender decided that scaling in straight line is faster than the rotation you have in mind. It just goes from pose A to pose B in the most efficient way.
>>610004What I wrote about in>>610007is highlighted in http://www.chocofur.com/using-shape-keys-in-blender.html under the Limitations section.
>>610007No offence taken.I've just had enough of watching tutorial vids where one minute I can't hear someone over their own breathing, to having to listen to latino pop at full blast.
>>610015Yes, there are many shit tutorials out there.You got two optionsMake a set of absolute shape keys at different angles of the blade and set interpolation to linear to prevent the blade from shrinking, or if VRChat cannot support that, model the blade to be able to slide out of the forearm in style of usb in >>610013 link.Good luck.
>>609978You can't use shapekeys because that's not what shapekeys do. You want the blade to rotate. A shape key can only warp between two preset positions.
>>610020>>610013I'm going to have to settle for blenders best guess for the transformation. I don't seem to have linear interpolation as an option.Thanks for the advice though.
Try unchecking the relative shape key option and create a new shape keys from mix every 45 degrees or so.
>>610029>linear interpolationswitch to the graph editor.
