This is a demo of one of my latest tools. It is inspired to the Michael Comet's pose space deformer plugin, but with a substantial difference: no extra plugin is needed.
The pose space deformation is realized by creating a corrective blendshape target driven by a node network.
Here is how it works:
- Select your mesh in the binding pose. The tool will store the character pose as base pose;
- Put your character in a problematic pose and press 'Start sculpting'. A proxy mesh (the green one) is generated and lets you correct the mesh geometry to the desired shape. Once finished hit 'Finalize scuplting';
- The next phase is connecting the corrective shape to your pose. You can choose between 3 different ways: (Attribute) Expression, (Attribute) Node network, (Joint) Radial distance.
The first two work basically in the same way, except the first is a combination of an expression and a node network, while the second one is fully network based. Each attribute determining the pose
is considered as a coordinate in a hyperspace. The blendtarget weight is the result of the normalized projection of the current pose vector on the "target pose – base pose" vector.
The third way, instead working on the single attributes, it works on influence basis. The blendshape weight is the result of a combination of the radial distance between the base pose and the target pose for each influence determining the pose.
- You can choose wich attributes/influences determine the pose on the Attribute list tab. The tool automatically proposes the influences that changed their coordinates from the base pose to the current pose.
- There is an option for pruning the blendshape weights (You can see the auto pruned target maps in the video): very useful if you end up creating tons of corrective shapes and you don't want to loose performance;
- From the mirror frame, you can enable/disable the creation of the mirror blendshape;
- Finally, to connect the blendshape and its mirror, just click on "Create corrective blendshape".
- Once finished, you can tweak the weights of your targets along the deformation by editing the ramp shaders driving them.
Future developments:
- High res sculpting for displacement map generation and driving.


Youtube: [link]

Vimeo: [link]



Thanks for watching
Tommaso