Add Shapekey Drivers Inherits Keyframes

[Maneki]

Would it be possible that when I add drivers to shapekeys which are already keyframed, that the driven morphs in the daz importer UI inherit the keyframes? This would be useful for Lightwave Point Cache exports and imports of animations. For example I like to bake geometry node animations with Lightwave Point Cache (MDD), remove or deactivate the Geometry Node modifier and import the baked animation back onto the model with MDD which adds the animation in form of shapekeys frame by frame which are keyframed. Baked geometry node animations are way more performant. It speeds up the viewport a lot while active and it also renders (loads the scene quicker) and exports way faster.
Main reason for this request is that I can then also transfer those shapekeys to something like clothing or face meshes.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Usually baked MDDs are used as is without drivers and that’s the purpose of them as you say it improves the general performance. But you should be able to just copy and paste the timeline if you need to, doesn’t it work ?

[Maneki]

@Alessandro Padovani One is mesh keyframes the other one is armature keyframes. I don’t think you can copy and paste them over to the armature. At least I tried and it doesn’t seem to work.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Main reason for this request is that I can then also transfer those shapekeys to something like clothing or face meshes.

I guess one way could be if Thomas makes the transfer tool available for the general mesh, not only for genesis figures.

[Maneki]

@Alessandro Padovani Could be a solution, yes.

[Thomas Larsson]

The transfer tool is now available to all meshes. I just transferred a shapekey from a sphere to an icosphere without problems.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 11a3cd3 works great here. It’s very useful to have a general purpose transfer tool thank you Thomas. Though most options don’t make sense for a general mesh and could be removed or disabled.

If Maneki is fine we can mark as resolved.

[Maneki]

@Alessandro Padovani The feature works but it doesn’t solve my problem. I skipped a part in my thought process, sorry. The transfer of the shapekeys works but the transfered shapekeys have no keyframes. For a 250 frame animation I’d have to keyframe 250 shapekeys for every other object where I want to use the baked animation. I personally don’t know how to copy over those keyframes without keyframing all the shapekeys at least on frame 1. Blender sadly has no option to keyframe multiple shapekeys at once by hand it seems.

[Alessandro Padovani]

You just have to copy and paste the timeline, works fine here. For example if you have a figure with 100 keyframes one per shapekey, to transfer the animation to the outfit you have to create the first keyframe with all the shapeys selected, then copy and paste the timeline from the figure to the outfit. Since they have the same shapekeys the animation is the same.

Or you may also try with a shrinkwrap without transferring the shapekeys and animation.

[Maneki]

@Alessandro Padovani I’m sorry, but how exactly do you select multiple shapekeys at once in the Blender UI? I can’t even shift select a second one. And like I mentioned, when I add drivers to the shapekeys, they won’t inherit the keyframes.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

To copy and paste from the timeline you have to insert at least one keyframe at the start of the animation, so blender knows where to paste.

Or, once you transfer the shapekeys to the outfit, to copy the figure animation to the outfit do as follows:

1. select the outfit
2. go to dope sheet > shape key editor
3. in the action menu select the figure action

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To keyframe multiple properties at once you can use keying sets.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/keyframes/keying_sets.html

Or, you can use the diffeomorphic morphs panel by adding a category, that will also allow you to manage multiple shapekeys at once.

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About drivers I can’t understand what you’re after or what you’re asking for sorry, what you say does not make sense to me. May be you can do an example.

[Maneki]

@Alessandro Padovani Ok, I got it, thank you! I had the impression that you can only add those shapekeys with the driver tool to the daz importer UI. It’s solved for me then.