making blendshapes for a head - help please copying the head is causing me problems
 

hi all,
ok im modeling a head and need to make blendshapes for it to help with the animation.
my problem is not knowing how to do this, but copying the existing head and all its controls and bones and moving it else where in the scene and then playing with it.
i have a number of CV curves etc for controls and already have blend shapes for the tongue etc, but so far my method of making copies of all of this is not working as i want.
i select everything in the outliner and put it as a new group and then copy it with the inputs else the controls dont work, but my problem comes when i move the head else where as the head moves and so does everything else but the bones and teeth and some of the other controls follow but not as fast / as far as the head goes so the bones are out of the head.

hope ive explained this well enough and i would think there would be a proper way of doing this, so many thanks for replies and help..

take care.

ps ive included a file to show my problem hope it uploads.

Only select the head mesh its self.

that will not work because the head is skinned to the bones already, so just selecting the head and copying it wont work as its attributes are greyed out and locked as they are controlled by the skin and bones now.

well the way i do it is make blend shapes before i bind them.

sadly i was told to do it in this order as then all my controls would be set up to allow me to set up blend shapes quickly, just cant seem to copy it in a way that makes it all move as one, as seen by the image above.

How to.....
 

You got yourself a simple lil prob to fix. Your head attributes are greyed cause they are locked. Just highlight them (the locked attributes) in the small lister(not the full sized attribute editor) and rightclick, click unlock and they will turn white again. Then you can do a Edit>Duplicate>Option Box. In the option box you will see a checkbox for duplicate input connections/input graph. UNcheck that so that you get just the mesh instead of the mesh and all its history.

If you have your head bound using a rigid bind you can Skin>Edit Rigid Skin>Preserve Skin Groups>Detach Skin (with the head and any joint selected). It will detach the head, you can do with it was you will (except add/subtract verts) then Skin>Edit Rigid Skin>Preserve Skin Groups>Reattach Skeleton to put it back on.

Once you get it duplicated you can edit the mesh as you need for making the blendshapes. When you are done with that select all the target shapes then the original mesh and then Demorfers>Blendshapes>opion Box. MAKE SURE THE ORIGIN IS SET TO LOCAL!!!!! or you head will float back to the origin space afer you start animating(i just found that out the hard way).

Hope this helps.

thanks alot for all the help guys i've got it sorted now thanks for all the advice.

take care.