Shapekeys Extended - Blender Add-on

Shapekeys Extended is a full overhaul of the shapekey system in Blender with new features and improvements. It hosts all of the same important features with added functionality, quality of life improvements, and additional features - a comprehensive list of all the features can be found below

This add-on is actively in development. Be aware that bugs could exist and cause problems (I've gotten most). If any issues are had please contact me though Discord or Gumroad so I can fix them! :)

Features

All default shapekey options are still available but modified and with the following additional features:

UI Features:

• Hierarchy layout with collapsing groups for organization
• Moving and reorganizing groups of shapekeys
• More convenient UI layout
• Any new shapekey will be added below the current selection instead of bottom of list
• All features (new and old) now work in edit mode
• New "Copy Shapekey" button that will copy the data from the currently selected shapekey to a new one

Additional Shapekey Menu Options:

• "Invert Shapekey" will apply the current selected shapekey as the basis and adjust the rest to match
• "Copy and Split Shapekey" will split a shapekey in the middle into left and right, while keeping the original.
• "Remove Empty Shapes" will remove any shapekey that has not been modified from the default.
• "Clear Shapekey Weights" will reset all shapekey values to zero.
• "Normalize Shapekey" will take a shapekey with a modified max range (like 0-2) and remap it to be 0-1 while keeping same shape.

Additional Shapekey Tools:

• "Pose to Shapekey" will take the posed bones and make a shapekey from them.
• "Remove Shapekey Influence" buttons that will remove/reset the current changes of your shapekey back to default for either your selected vertices or all.
• "Apply shapekey modifiers" will let you apply modifiers on a mesh that already has shapekeys on it. You can optionally keep the armature modifier.
• "Add Facetracking Shapekeys" section that will let you choose from a list of common face tracking standards such as Vive, ARKit, Meta, UnifiedExpressions, and MMD (jp & en)

And more small improvements...

Installation & Usage

Installation:

To install the blender add-on, open Blender, and go to the top left of the window. Under Edit>Preferences>Add-ons, you can select install from the upper-right corner of the window and select the downloaded ShapekeysExtended-CasTools .zip folder. Once it is installed, you can find it in the add-on list and enable it.

Usage:

To use the add-on once it's installed, you must selected and active object then go to Properties>Data>ShapekeysExtended. It wil be in the same location as the normal shapekey panel, you may just need it scroll down and drag it up higher in the list. From there, you can use it like the normal shapekey panel but with the added features listed above!

Terms of Service

GNU GPL 3.0

To be made...

Update information

V1.2.0 - Major Update

• Added additional N-Menu for easy access to the shapekey tools
• Added the ability to apply modifiers on meshes with shapekeys. Added to tools menus.
• Added "Normalize Shapekey" operator, accessible through the shapekey dropdown menu
• Added "Remove Empty Shapekeys" that will remove any shapekey that has not been modified from the original, accessible through the shapekey dropdown menu
• Small bug fixes and codebase updates.

V1.1.2 - Minor Update and Bug Fixes

• Fixed bugs with mode switches
• Added an experimental "Pose to Shapekey" feature

V1.1.1 - Minor Update and Bug Fixes

• Added explicit mode switches for ALL operators (nothing user-end)
• Force active selection to top-most shapekey when collapsing (prevents operations on hidden shapekeys)
• Fixed error with displaying shapekeys after copying (add and copy now behave the same exact way)

V1.1.0 - Major Update and Bug Fixes

• Added lock buttons to the shapekey list
• Added mute buttons to the shapekey list
• Added "Clear all shapekey weights" button to dropdown menu
• Fixed issues and improved moving individual shapekeys and groups shakeys and related behaviors (Thank you Ananymous)
• Fixed bug with adding a shapekey at the bottom of the list
• Fixed bug with pinning state saving between objects (Thank you hey_zeus)
• Various small bug fixes
• Slight performance increase

V1.0.1 - Minor Change

• Temporarily disable x-mirroring in edit mode when using "Copy and Split Shakekey" to prevent both sides from getting operated on for both left and right.

V1.0 - Full Release

• Added "Copy and Split Shakekey" option that will make a copy of the active shapekey for the left and right half.
• Changed UI slightly and how sorting works under the hood to be more reliable and update immediately.

• Fixed bug with copying a shapekey in edit mode causing shapekey names to be offset. This was caused by not switching modes during the operation. Now every operation enforced the mode that is needed so this should never happen again.
• Fixed bug where binned shapekey was saved for the scene instead of the individual object.

V0.3 - Initial Test Release