What is a "blend shape"?

[samantha]

Godot Version

4.3

Question

I’m working on a project to make a tool for 3D modelling plants. I am starting the class which I will be using to model leaves today and am currently planning to extend an ArrayMesh to do so.

As prep before writing any code, I wanted to brush up on the ArrayMesh documentation (I have used it a little bit before). I noticed that there is an option to add “blend shapes” and I have no idea what those are.

I’m a computer science student and not much of an artist, so I am not familiar with them from blender. I’m hoping that someone can take the time to explain them to me since I haven’t been able to find a solid resource that explains them for a beginner.

Thank you very much for your time!

[trizZzle]

The most popular usage of blendshapes in gamedev is probably for character creation.

The models have different defined shapes (for example ears) which you can “blend” from one shape to another.

I haven’t used them in Godot (or any other engine yet), so that’s all I can tell you.

Here an example from Blender:

Value set to 0:

Increase value:

Max value:

I created a simple plane, added a shape key, went in edit mode and changed its dimensions. Now I can blend between those 2 shapes (image 1 and 3).

[samantha]

Interesting! Thank you for the explanation!

Is this typically used for animation? Like blending from one facial expression to another?

[gertkeno]

Yes, more often though it can also be used in character creators, attached to a slider to make a nose longer or eyes further apart or anything in-between.

[samantha]

Gotcha! Thank you!