problems posing the mhx rig in Blender

[anurup]

Hi,

I posted this on blenderartists - also thought I'd ask here.

When I import an mhx rig into Blender, I can't seem to get the posing to work correctly - let me elaborate.

I choose the rig and go into Pose mode. I insert a a keyframe at frame 1 with the default slider/bone positions. I then move forward to frame 11, do a few changes (like shut both the eyelids) and then insert another keyframe there. I expect the animation to move from frame 1 to frame 11 - with the eyelids going from open to shut in that time.

However, every time I get varied and unexpected results. Once, only one of the eyelids would open and shut, whereas I had keyframed both to do that. Another try - and this time the figure keeps the eyelids shut even when I move back to frame 1, and shows the same behaviour for every frame between 1 and 11.

Am I missing something? Should I be doing this differently?

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

P.S. I'm having great fun with these two pieces of software...

[joepal]

This is what I do when I want to set a key frame:

- select all selectable points in the rig in pose mode (hit A a few times)
- hit I to insert a key frame
- choose loc/rot/scale in the menu that pops up

I have found that trying to set frames for individual points in the rig results in unpredictable results, so I just explicitly set them for all points at once. That usually gives me the result I was after.

[ThomasL]

The eyelid bones on layer 16 are not supposed to be manipulated directly. They are driven by the corresponding bones in the face panel on layer 9. If you set keys for the panel bones, things should work out correctly. These bones should have location keys, not rotation.

Originally the panel was only used to drive shapekeys. However, it turned out that the eyelids deformed better with bones than with morphs (no eyes penetrating the lids).

[anurup]

First a heart-felt thank you to both of you for finding the time to reply.

@ThomasL : Thanks for the informative reply. I should tell you that I was using the sliders on the face panel - sorry that I wasn't clear the first time round. However, adding only Loc keys didn't improve the situation.

@ joepal : Your solution worked perfectly! Thanks.