Chris Lesage Shows How You Can use Maya’s combinationShape Node as MIN MAX Nodes.

Maya’s Shape Editor introduced back in version 2016.5 offered a brand-new workflow for blend shapes with access to ease targets, and sculpting brushes. Also added is a combinationShape. “If you’ve created a corrective shape in the Shape Editor, you’ve likely already seen this node.” Says freelance Character Rigging TD Chris Lesage.

The combinationShape Node drives Maya’s corrective shapes in the shape editor but combining the values for multiple blend shapes. Recently by some tinkering, Lesage found that you can use the node as a MIN MAX node. “forget about corrective blend shapes for a moment. You are free to use it manually.” Lesage says of the node. “when you set combinationShape to “lowest weighting”, it just outputs the MINIMUM value of all of its inputs. And you can connect as many inputs as you want.” Hooking up the inputs and outputs to Reverse Nodes will provide the opposite effect or MAX.

Lesage explains it all in his article that details the combinationShape node and how to use it as MIN-MAX, with some practical use-cases.