Simple way for Mesh duplicate

planzzz

Hi everyone!
I make animation of man who lit a torch. I use Mesh deform.
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There are 3 images have identical Meshes: head, head light, head shadow.
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In first I made Mesh animation for head and after that copyed it for light and for shadow.
When I needed to make some edits in key frames I used copy-paste for each Mesh again, again and again. If I'll need to make some edits in Mesh setup I'll use more copy-paste again and again |(
Also now I have only 3 image, but I need to use more: eyes, brows, mouth, cloth will have own light and shadow.
Maybe you know the easyest way for duplicate Mesh animation? The one Mesh for rule them all is the best way, but unfortunately Linked mesh is useless for my obvious task, because it aplies for ony one slot 🙁

planzzz

Nate

Unfortunately there's not an easier way using deform keys. The reason linked meshes are limited to one slot is because the timeline needs to find the mesh it needs to apply the deform to. If that mesh could be in any slot, it would have to look in many places and potentially apply the deform multiple times.

You could use weights. You would then move bones to deform your meshes rather than deform keys.

Erika

I have the same problem XD you could try first animating everything for one mesh and the others deactivated and then doing the big copy-paste thing. Weights are a good option if you can add more bones and have no different skins though (not my case haha).
(I paused that project by the way, since it was personal and so much work to do) good luck planzzz!

You might want to consider dinamic lighting. I remember a friend of mine baking this project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2dee/sprite-dlight-instant-normal-maps-for-2d-graphics/description and they claim it works with skeletal animation as well!

planzzz

Nate wrote
You could use weights. You would then move bones to deform your meshes rather than deform keys.

Thanks. I'll use weights and bones 🙁

Erikari wrote
I remember a friend of mine baking this project:

Cool! I'm not shure that it will be great tool, but any way I'll be waiting for release )
And don't freeze projects! Copy-paste is not the reason 😉

mayhemking

I was looking for a solution to the same problem. I think I've figured out a decent solution. Instead of animating the vertices directly you can influence the vertices on multiple drawings with a few bones.

Nate

Yep, that is a good solution.