convert to shapekeys has some issues

[Alessandro Padovani]

4.2.1.2301, blender 4.2.1

When we convert morphs to shapekeys the morph range is lost and the shapekey always has a -10 10 range. It is expected to preserve the morph range.

When we remove standard morphs we get an error.

steps:

1. import G8F with face units
2. we need to merge the eyelashes to convert to shapekeys: setup > finishing > merge meshes
3. convert morphs to shapekeys
4. the created morphs are not driven, so we can delete the face units afterward: advanced > morphs > remove standard morphs

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[Thomas Larsson]

Both issues are fixed in the last commit. For further clean up, we can run Remove All Drivers with Delete Properties enabled and Delete Shapekeys disabled afterwards.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 54fe648 works fine thank you.

I’m confused about your comment though, the tooltip says “remove selected morphs and associated drivers“, so what do we gain by deleting the drivers again ? Or is the tooltip wrong ? Let us know thank you.

p.s. Also deleting all drivers would include the jcms that we want probably to keep, even after converting face units, if I understand correctly.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

update. I see the armature drivers for face units are not deleted, so I can’t say if the tooltip is wrong or it refers just to the slider drivers. If so a better tooltip would be “Remove selected morphs and associated sliders. Beware: armature drivers are not removed.“. In this case if we want a figure with jcms and shapekeys I guess we have to load the jcms after the conversion.

Let us know if I miss something, thank you.

steps:

1. convert morphs to shapekeys
2. remove all drivers
3. import jcms

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[Thomas Larsson]

These tools are mainly intended for export to game engines. Since the drivers are Blender specific, they won’t work in a game engine and there is no reason to keep them. If you intend to stay within Blender I don’t see why you would want to convert the morphs to shapekeys. Takes up more space and vertices can only move along straight lines and not in circles.

If you want to keep jcms maybe there is a way to bake their animation before deleting drivers.

The tooltip is wrong. It is to difficult to disentangle which drivers and properties that are due to a specific morph.

[Alessandro Padovani]

When we export to fbx the exporter already bakes both bones and shapekeys, thus no conversion is necessary whatsoever. However we would convert to shapekeys to animate in the game engine, rather than exporting the blender animation, in this case yes, the jcms are lost anyway as you noted.

Thank you for the fix and the explanation, closing as resolved.