Blinks, Eyelids and Non-linear Shapekeys in Blender

[@Izabelle_hunte]

!!For people who don't know how to install the addon!! (it still works for blender 3.6) Download the addon and then when unpacking the .zip file, point the location to be the blender addon folder. Then when opening blender go to Edit>preferences>addons>install. Then you should be able to find your unpacked script, where you just select it. Then tick the addon, and then it should appear at the very bottom of your Data propeties (the triangle with 3 dots) Hope this helps :)

[@pilotdawn1661]

Excellent demo and lesson. Also EXTREMELY helpful leaving in the missteps or problems - VERY helpful and Great Thanks.

[@Hollowpixel]

You're very welcome!

[@NicolasRouelle]

Very cool system for non linear eye blinks shapekeys, thanks to take time to explain your process. I tried for a squid eye to use shrink wrap to force the shape key of the circular eyelid to follow the sphere surface of the eye ball

[@lfgarrocho]

That's a great solution. As I'm very bad at editing drivers I came up with another one that worked very well for me, and that is dividing the shape key of the blink in moments. First I drop the uper lid and make a shape key at that point. Then I make a new shape key from mix, and finish the blink after that point. That usually makes everything work out just fine.

[@user-jw1nd1uf8w]

Thank you so much, I've been searching for this process to no luck. You made it really clear and easy to follow, thank you for your help.

[@aquazolt13]

2yrs old > still informative :) thanks!

[@binyaminbass]

Wow! Very useful. I didn't even know this was possible, but I wanted it for some time. Thank you!

[@loredragonwrites7673]

This was exactly what I needed! Thank you so much for this

[@pxy-gnomes9781]

¡¡This is incredible!! Great tutorial and Addon. This feature has been completely missing in Blender (from my small understanding, as I'm trying to learn facial rigging). It is a life-saver, and there are few months already I have been looking for a better solution for "In-Between/Breakdown" Shape Keys... Because I have a 2D Traditional Animation background, it's just a very basic and organic thing to be able to _breakdown_ any linearity in animation; however, when it comes to Shape Keys in Blender, this simple trick (at least when it comes to Animation Drawing) seems to very insanely difficult or even hardly feasible -absurdly frustrating that is. From that same perspective, of course ideally, the best thing would still be to be able (¿one day perhaps?) to simply insert new breakdown/inbetween (manually mesh-edited) Shape Key(s) between, for example, a "Basis" and a "Key 1" Shape Keys; so that it would make it A->A¹->B instead of just A->B. Yet, what you've managed to further develop here, seems to be extremely more effective and technically friendlier than everything else -not very satysfying solutions at all- out there in Blender currently I guess. In my case, I understand I'll have to split my original eyelids Shape Key (making one for the upper eyelid and one for the bottom eyelid) in order to get the best use of the "XYZ analysis" tool (I'll make 2 XYZ analysis, one for each Shape Key: the top and the bottom and shape their drivers' curves accordingly). But this small retake already seems waaay better than what I've achieved before -until I've discovered your tutorial. In the previous solution, had to make 3 whole different "Animations" (as Shape Keys) for the eyelids blink system... so to make the eyelids follow a (bit more non-linearly) the curve of the eye surface, each animation focusing on a particular eyelids "pose" or "key-frame", and as the first animation Shape Key wasn't any more necessary, it was followed by the next, which then was dismissed as well, giving place to last one -my graph looked like a sawtooth roof. This was pretty difficult to work with, very non-intuitive, and it was somehow a "half-blind" approach (relying on 'luck', because I couldn't manipulate the mesh animation from the Drivers after they were made... only through the Bone itself, which required me to drop everything and go back to Pose Mode and literally "guess" the timings visually from 0.0 to 1.0). I'm totally switching from such and older solution to the new one you're proposing, because it was literally crushing me artistically; furthermore, it didn't allow me to clear (until now) all the interpenetrations, so annoying it was to work with. So, thank again an so much for this great achievement and tutorial; you and the fellow of the original code certainly deserve the best for this crucial development. Lots of Blender artists out there have been struggling, since years it seems, from the lacking of good features on this particular issue. You've gained an enthousiastic follower. ¡Cheer!

[@Hollowpixel]

Thatss so nice of you. :) really glad it helped.

[@SpartanFlashSentry]

Thank you for the tutorial, Hollowpixel! I was wondering if you had an updated version of this plugin? It doesn't seem to work with Blender 4.1. Thanks!

[@mnaranimationstudio]

Love u ,u made my biggest and last learning point in blender thanks

[@pallogvinov1706]

Awesome! Thank you very much.

[@dikieming3987]

How do I create a mirror shape key topology ?

[@endk44]

Very great tutorial Thanks

[@Valder95]

Thank you very much, this helped.

[@goldendeadlysniper5790]

Thank u so much but one problem, how do I combine the X Y Z Drivers back into 1 key?

[@arthura.8836]

Did you solve this?

[@goldendeadlysniper5790]

@@arthura.8836 nope

[@michaelbendavid777]

@@arthura.8836 enable all the 3 shape keys (x, y, z) at 1.000 then do a new shape from mix...

[@杨小威]

Quite talented!!!

[@arthura.8836]

Ive been trying to add those 4 keys (basis/Key1/X/Y/Z) into a driver, but no success.. any tips on how to?

[@njnjhjh8918]

Would be helpful to see a side-by-side comparison

[@vanhunghoang5833]

help me, why when i rotate 1/2 sphere from 0-1 my object is deformed but not fixed during rotation?

[@Mortom83]

How to enable it on list of addon - i'm trying to install but nothing happens when i try to install .py file or zip :(

[@storeboughtrocketgames2560]

Unfortunately this didn't really work for me in Blender 3.2.1. I had the same droopy eye issue someone else had, and the x, y, and z axis scaling were behaving kind of wonky. I ended up just creating a second shape key for the Y axis and moving it manually throughout the eye blink, which worked about the same.

[@devWeidz]

Once done, is there any way to separately drive shapekeys xyz on vertex groups (Left/Right/Bottom/Top eyelids) ?

[@Hollowpixel]

If you open the shapekey panel there is an option to add a vertex group to any shapekey, its just below the range min/maxsliders

[@EDcase1]

Brilliant thanks 👍

[@jasiani2598]

How do you make this work in Unreal? I saw you respond to another comment, saying that you got it to work in Unreal and I would really appreciate the information!

[@satya7568]

How to download this addon

[@Hollowpixel]

links in the description but here it is again github.com/Hollowpixels/blenderaddons/tree/main

[@eSmil3y]

Hi, great tutorial so far! What I don't get though is, how do you get keyframes of the shapekeys. They won't appear in my timeline/curve editor as they do in your case as soon you paste your driver?

[@Hollowpixel]

Not sure i follow you, but the key frames are in the drivers curve editor… not in the time line in the drivers n panel on (i think) the first tab is an option to add keys.

[@crazypixelscp955]

guys i installed the addon and i cant find it ... can you help me?

[@Mortom83]

Do You find solution? i'm trying to instal and nothing happens... i copied file manually.. still nothing happens. Trying in several blender versions... still can't make it work. :(

[@sukhrobmirzodavlatov2385]

Maybe I'm late but check Object Data Properties you should find there Hollowpixel Shapekey Operators menu

[@Mortom83]

@@sukhrobmirzodavlatov2385 After clicking install, the addon itself did not appear in the list to activate addons, and I do not see any additional panel in the "Object Data Properties" :(

[@crazypixelscp955]

@@Mortom83 the zip folder contains 2 files ( first file called hollowpixel shape key and the other one called read me ) just extract the zip folder then delete the read me file and install the hollow pixel file from edit preferences addon after extracting the folder .

[@tokinimo54]

may i ask, is this function transfers well to unreal too?

[@Hollowpixel]

yes it works in unreal just fine :)

[@MaciejStepniewski]

@@Hollowpixel hey, I'm trying to move this into Unreal, like apply the remapping to an original blendshape, could elaborate on how you made it work?

[@needlessToo]

I think the addon is not working with the new versions anymore.

[@sukhrobmirzodavlatov2385]

I installed this addon on 3.4.0. It works

[@Hollowpixel]

Yeah Some things gone awry there. I'll try to take a look asap

[@Valder95]

Worked in blender 3.5

[@bobevans5730]

Is anyone else having trouble installing addon? Preferences>Addons>install>Select the zipped file. Then nothing happens, if anyone could help that would be great.

[@bobevans5730]

Never mind I figured it out

[@Mortom83]

​@@bobevans5730 How you make it work? I'm can not see on list of the addons to activate it :(

[@JaXuun]

blender has no inbetween blendshapes (in 2022) ? lol ? they should stop pushing the animation tools further and further back on the roadmap.

[@Tinfoil.Hatter]

Thanks British Dude

[@unknownpeople4613]

Me: looking for it month ago KZbin: reCommeNd

[@ea-g4056]

Doesn’t work for me 😭 the eyelid just kronenbergs down to the ankles…..

[@Hollowpixel]

sorry to hear that, I'd be happy to take a look at your file so i can help you trouble shoot.

[@johnrodriguez5319]

Don't know if you ever found the solution to the issue, but I looked at the Blender log since I had the same issue and realized that it was due to my base key being called Basic. And the script was looking for Basis. Once I changed it from Basic to Basis it worked fine. Not sure if that had to do with me using thee diffeomorphic importer which created the shapekeys.