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January 25, 2013 Posted by Debi in All Articles, ANIMATION, Deformations, Morph Maps, Morphs, Step-by-Step, VERTEX MAPS

Creating Custom Sliders for Morph maps

Description	Once you've created a variety of morphs for your character's facial expressions, creating "sliders" by using the channel haul tool and custom user-channels, will enable you to quickly animate your character's face, by simply transitioning between their various poses. When I first looked at writing a Step-by-Step for this, I was basing it on Ryan Drue's video back from the 401 days on Lux TV. Naturally, I was expecting this to have changed slightly (as I am writing this during 601 SP5). But halfway through I got stuck because the interface had since changed. So I had to go to the forums for help. Within an hour or so, I received two responses - one from modo mio, who gave me the answer I wanted, and then Clef took it one step further and gave me the answer I needed by creating an updated video using the newer schematic view. So this article is kind of a hybrid of all three approaches but hopefully the simplest way.
Step-by-Step	Note that this article does not cover the actual creation of your morph maps. It assumes you have already created them or else, you're using a mesh such as the Old Man Head (part of modo's standard Content), which comes with its own set of facial morph maps. Create Morph Influence Under > Lists > Morph Maps select the first Morph map, right-click, and choose Add Morph Influence. Right-click and rename the Morph Influence by appending the facial expression description (e.g. Morph Influence - Angry). Rinse, repeat for each of your morph maps. Create Locator & set how it's displayed Create a Locator in the Item List and rename it 'Face Controls' Drag all of your Morph Influences onto the Locator (just to keep things tidy). Position the Locator in front of the head and a bit to the side (as shown in the top image). With the Face Controls locator still selected, under > Display > 3D Items tab on the right, click on Add Draw Options and fill in fields as shown. Under the Locator Shapes tab below that, fill in fields as per image Create User Channels With the Face Controller selected in the Item List, go to > Properties > User Channels > Add User Channel for each of the morphs. Link User Channels Go to the Setup tab. The Schematics viewport will be displayed. Go to the Channels tab on the bottom right Scroll down and select all of the morphs channels just created Drag them left into the Schematic viewport From the Items tab, select each of the Morph Influences one-at-a-time and then go to the Channels tab and drag the Strength into the Schematics viewport Wire up each morph influence to its own Strength driver Connect Face Controller to Channel Haul Select the Face Controller from the Item List Go to > Assembly > Settings > Utility > Commandand select item.channelHaul Click on the Face Controller in the viewport and the Channel Haul will appear. Use the sliders to adjust the character's facial expressions. These can be keyed in the Animation timeline.
Source	You can watch the original video by Ryan Drue created for modo 401 (Old Luxology Forums - no longer exists) Later on when 601 came out, there were questions on the forum about how the workflow had since changed where Clef and a modo mio responded And this is Clef's video using the schematic view
Credits	Ryan Drue, a modo mio, Clef