Luis Tech and Leadership

 Sometimes it's easy to just feel demotivated and lost.  Sighs. 

 https://www.facebook.com/scoodyboodyboo/photos/pcb.214208286679268/214207876679309 If I was to sum it up, it would be: Ask-type =  Would ask if they are uncertain. This is like asking for a random favor. Guess-type =  Would imply as if they are certain. This is more like asking by implying on it, and expected a fairly accurate response. Great communication skills to manage expectation :D

So in order to tweak UV on a skinned mesh, the best way to do is to tackle it on it's shapeOrig node.  Let me describe my scenario. I have a skinned mesh with corrective blendshapes stacking on each other, it looked like this in channel box: head_bs_target (blendshape node) skinCluster9 (skinCluster node, duh) body_corrective_BS (blendshape node) tweak12 So, adding on another polyTweakUV node will look like this: polyTweakUV head_bs_target skinCluster9 body_corrective_BS tweak12 As we can imagine, polyTweakUV gets its "inMesh" connection from head_bs_target (head_bs_target.output -> polyTweakUV.inMesh) that means if we bake everything from polyTweakUV by using "Delete non-deformer history", it bakes the geometry itself as well, so it wasn't affected by the deformer nodes even they are still present. So I duplicate a pre-UV-tweaked mesh, replace polyTweakUV.inMesh connection from head_bs_target to the duplicatedMesh, and then, connect the output to the ski...

 ain't gonna lie. I am very tired

 Need things to be fast and good, not optimised. More efficient way of RnDs to prove higher rewards in the long run. But here's the thing.. if they don't learn whatever I have learnt.. we will never be on the same page, or the same spirit. Being a lead that works under a person who doesn't really know more than I do is really hard to appreciate what are the efforts about.  I guess, I will need to put down my ego a little bit more. But nonetheless, resignation is imminent.

 Facial rig: - Simplicity is the key. A key joint on key component, and pre-bind matrix + hand-sculpted blendshapes. Then how do we capture accurate blendshapes? This is very difficult, should take note. The first thing that comes to mind is that, bind a duplicate of the geometry, skin it, and deform it. Then once you reach the optimal deformation, move the individual joints and duplicate the deformed mesh. Since they are all sharing the same vertex IDs, it should be easy breezy - For most accurate deformation, sculpted blendshapes is the best. Nuff said. Blending between puffed cheek from smile expression to eye squeeze, flawless. Attitude: - Determine. Determine. Don't forget where you wanna go. Work hard for it. This is part of the process, don't doubt it.  - Focus. Focus and focus more. - Take some time to rest, take more time to invest.

Some quick Maya modeling tip.  I did a few quick rigging test, but I noticed it has performance issue where you have multiple meshes running simultaneously and its too heavy for Maya to compute. Yikes. Maybe I need more studies on this