[Bf-committers] Proposal for better integration of shape keys

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Hello,

I'm currently working on a face rig and i wanted to use shape keys for 
the details. But i encountered the problem that i would need to apply 
the mirror modifier. If i don't, then i have no way to create left or 
right sided shape keys, because every shape key will always affect the 
left and right side of the resulting mesh. (in the stack the shapekeys 
are applied first to the mesh, the mirroring happens afterwards)

But if i apply the mirror modifier then i have other problems. At first 
i have to define left and right sided shapekeys. This is a lot of extra 
work. The second point is if i have to make some corrections to the 
geometry later on. Grabbing a vertice is no problem (x-mirror), but 
deleting and creating new faces in a mirrored fashion is a problem that 
x-mirror does no solve.

So i was thinking on how this could be avoided. I came up with the idea 
that shape keys should recognize that a mirror-modifier is the first 
modifier. If it is set to x-mirroring, then the mirror modifier should 
be applied first and the shape keys later on, while automatically 
influencing the left and right side with two influence sliders. This has 
multiple advantages:

1. no need to give up the mirror-modifier
2. shape keys only need to be created on one side

A simple mockup would look like this (left current, right proposed): 
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=46086

Greetings from
Tobias Oelgarte