sculpting blendshapes

[jim c]

What's the best workflow for sculpting blendshapes in Houdini?

I've got a symmetrical character. I was under the impression that if I used the Edit SOP and plugged the deformed mesh into the 1st input, and the non deformed mesh into the 2nd, then the sculpt brush would mirror over stuff correctly. Sadly what I'm finding is that sometimes it does and other times it completely screws things up. So... what are my options? Is there some way to simply edit the left side and have those mirrored over to the right (note that I do NOT want to create new geometry, I simply want to mirror over the positions from left to right). If I edit the mesh in it's nondeformed state, then the mirroring with the edit sculpt works better, but it's much harder to tell how things will look. I can template the deformed mesh, but it's still difficult to work.

[edward]

Just plug your shape into the first input of the Edit SOP, now turn on Use Mirror parameter before sculpting? If you right-click on the tool icon in left (vertical) toolbar in the viewport, I think there's also a mirror handle you can enable as well.

[jim c]

That's what I did at first, and then when I ran into problems I tried using the second input to help. In any case, it seems unpredictable what works and what doesn't. I can post some screenshots later this evening when I get home.

[jim c]

I found the problem with this, as usual it's my goof. Turned out the mesh, after exporting from ZBrush, had picked up enough changes in it that it broke the symmetry, which explains why the Edit SOP was having issues. Interestingly enough the edit SOP handled this a bit better than Modo's symmetry tool setting did.