VIDEO DOCUMENTATION

DOCUMENTATION

Location

Panel
Object Data ‣ Shape Keys ‣ Driver-Rig

Driver Exporter
Panel NLA Editor ‣ NLA Strip ‣ Action

Actions

Generate Key Bones
Update and generate all Control Bones in the active object, creating a 3D interface in the Object Rig. The Control Bones will activate all shape keys targeted under Directional Keys when that bone is moved in a specific way

Add/Remove
Create a new Control Bone or delete the selected one

Up/Down
Move the selected Control Bone up or down in the list. These are generated in the order they appear in this list, although bone ‘Groups’ are all generated together

Swap Left/Right
This will swap any shape keys in this Control Bone intended for one relative direction for another. It does this by looking for pairs of shape keys that start with 'R_' or 'L_', 'Right_' or 'Left_' or that end with '_R' or '_L', '_Right' or '_Left’. If it finds a pair, it swaps Left with Right or Right with Left

Mirror Shape Keys
This mirrors the direction that is used to trigger the shape keys in a Control Bone. Specifically, it swaps the direction for Up/Down and Left/Right, as well as Bigger/Smaller and Clockwise/Anticlockwise

Duplicate
This makes a duplicate of the selected Control Bone

Driver Exporter
Bake Drivers
For all all selected objects, bake the values of all shape keys (with drivers) to keyframes. This is baked from all NLA Strips of the active object, creating one new NLA Strip which is created for each NLA Strip in the active object

Remove Drivers
Remove drivers from all shape keys of all selected objects

Settings

Object Rig
The rig the 3D interface will be generated to. This will usually be the rig being used to control the mesh. This cannot be ‘none’

Parent Bone
The bone inside the Object Rig the 3D interface will be parented to

Width
This defines how wide the 3D interface will go before the bones will generate on the next ‘line’

Draw Name
Enabling this will generate a label in the 3D interface of the name of the Control Bone to make it easier to track which bone is which. If this is not enabled, it only labels the bones as ‘groups’

All Caps
Because of how Blender renders bones, the text can be difficult to read. Enabling All Caps renders the bone text labels in upper case which is easier to read

Control Bone (each item has its own settings)

Name
The name the bone will be generated with

Group
The group the bone will be generated with. Control Bones in the same Group are generated together and have their own ‘line’ in the interface

Directional Keys
This list of directions show which directions a Control Bone will be able to be moved in to trigger which shape keys. Each direction may have multiple shape keys targeted inside.

Recursive Bone
You may find some more complex setups do not work. Specifically, if the same shape key is being used in opposite directions (the same shape key in ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ for example). Enabling this will allow this to work. However, note that there is a hard limit on how complex a driver in Blender can be, and enabling this setting makes a driver much more ‘complex’.