A Quick Overview of the New Features and Improvements of SHAPES 5

Brave Rabbit Has a Look at the Key Features of SHAPES 5 Including a New New weightsServer Node.

SHAPES is perhaps the definitive Blend Shapes editing tool for Autodesk Maya that offers a unified and comprehensive workflow. SHAPES lets you create and edit Blend Shape targets and everything that goes with them. SHAPES 5 is slated to go into beta this week with a lot of new features and improvements. SHAPES 5 adds symmetry support for single and multi-shell meshes, a new weights server node, and the ability to set a custom path for storing blend shape setup related data that you can define through the plugin’s the preferences.

What’s New in SHAPES 5

  • topological symmetry support for single- and multi-shell meshes
  • export and import if blend shape deltas as a JSON file
  • new weightsServer node to create and control blend shape weights based on influence positions, curves or textures
  • a custom path for storing blend shape setup related data can be defined via the preferences
  • the custom path for the setup export gets remembered as a preference
  • added preference to use the undeformed original mesh as the blend mesh when in Edit mode
  • ability to export and import frozen maps at all times
  • hidden faces are now preserved when entering Edit mode (Maya 2017 and later)
  • component selections are maintained when entering Edit mode