Strange issue with Maya skincluster and blendshapes

Hi everyone,

I ran into a strange issue with skinclusters with blendshapes put in parallel and was wondering if anyone might be able to explain to me why. Basically when the head is turned the blendshape would deform strangely. I’m at a complete loss to explain what was going on with it. I’ve never seen this happen with blendshapes in parallel with a skincluster, but changing the blendshape node to Front of Chain fixed this. My question is why? I’ve never had an issue with blendshapes in parallel with a skincluster before. If it makes any difference it was modeled and rigged in Maya 2011, but all my rigs from older versions of maya work fine without changing the deformation order. I’d really like to understand this in case I have the same issue again between different deformer types. Thanks.

~Serv

As in this image, make sure the parallel blends node is before the skinCluster. Does that help? If not, maybe there’s something going on with the rig hierarchy.