KineFX: Exporting Blendshapes (Houdini 19.5)

Here we cover exporting blend-shapes using the built-in nodes for Houdini 19.5.
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[@mrpdean]

Please keep the KineFX videos coming. You are by far the best source of information on KineFX around IMO. I would love to see a video on how to delete joints from already skinned geometry, while transferring the weights to the parent of the deleted joint.

[@chrispetersen3613]

Finallly thank you! I’ve been wondering about this but haven’t had time to research.

[@RMAFIRE]

It's incredible, phenomenal, amazing✔♥

[@DanaHamers]

Many thanks for this tutorial! I'm learning a lot from your video's Please continue!

[@kegsfx8603]

Another great video! These types of details/subjects help a lot!!

[@DevGods]

I'm trying to follow this in H20 using a mesh that has existing blendshapes. I have copies of that mesh that have different body shapes but when I view my blend shape the mesh explodes

[@namnam6074]

Amazing, thank you so much! The process is quite confusing and you are the only one covering it in detail, thank you for all your KineFX videos! Do you perhaps have experience in linking the blenshapes to live mocap using the MocapStream node and Live Link?

[@brundlethwaite]

Unfortunately no. That is beyond the current scope of my personal projects and I do not have access the equipment needed. I have done some basic setups for facial animation using Computer Vision Libraries and have a facial setup for that but that does not use the MocapSteam node. I do want to get a mocap suit eventially but I cannot afford it at present. For my rigs I am currently using pose space blendshapes driven by expressions for my automatic deformations.

[@namnam6074]

I see, well thank you anyhow! Your videos are immensely helpful for all things KineFx. They helped me get the blendshapes working I just need to figure out how to the load some sort of facial anim to drive them.@@brundlethwaite

[@thunder_tl]

I usually use the node "character blendshape channels" to read the blendsshape and assign a value to it to form the animation.

[@thunder_tl]

How to read and drive blendshapes in houdini for blendshape animation data?

[@andrey730]

How does it work exactly? If I connect characterblendshapesadd and skeleton to "character blendshape channels", type in blend shape name and try to tweak it's value it doesn't have any effect.

[@johanboekhoven]

@@andrey730 and anyone finding this, you wire in the skeleton anim (rig pose ouput most likely) and output of "character blendshapes add" and then it works as the normal blendshapes and it will add the anim data into the skeleton anim stream, same as Brundlethwaite does with the attributeCreate. It's a convenience setup, but does the same thing in the end.

[@YuuJer]

wow! so easy in 19.5! your other video was super complex and way out of my skill level! how do you do this with the new inbetween blendshapes for UE 5.1?

[@thunder_tl]

How to read and drive blendshapes in houdini for blendshape animation data? For example, audio2face can generate blendshape animation data in usd format, but I don't understand how to load and drive it for houdini.

[@brundlethwaite]

Unfortunately USD is not meant to be animation format and does not support character animation. The animation support in it is limited and will not really help with blend-shapes. You can export the mesh shapes with USD but for the animation you will have to export a .json or a .xml animation and then use a plug-in or write an importer for that. Unfortunately I do not think .fbx is supported in audio2face, so there will not be any simple import options if they have not created and import plug-in. At the moment I do not think there is a Houdini plug-in.

[@thunder_tl]

@@brundlethwaite Thank you very much for your answer, your answer is very informative. I observed that audio2face can output .json blendshape animation there.

[@thunder_tl]

@brundlethwaite Another curious question is, how should the blendshaps weight animated data be loaded in houdini? Or is this data currently only available in .json or .xml animation format, and doesn't houdini have a node that can do this directly?