Six nurbs shapes are generated and assigned a red checked material, these are deformer test objects. The ‘nonlinear’ controls can be found under the ‘deform’ tab in the Animation menu.
Applying the bend deformer will create a handle, as seen in the outliner window. This handle has its own controls in the viewport when selected, and is connected to the object through ‘inputs’.
Envelope – on off switch
Curvature – bend deformer only
The handle’s inputs can be adjusted and, when key framed on the animation timeline, can create flexible, bendy movement. Because bend handles have their own set of coordinates, it must be parented to its shape in the outliner window before the shape can be moved around.
The ‘flare deformer’ creates two ring handles on either end of the cylinder, along with the line running through the centre. ‘flare’ has additional input controls…
Curve – inflates and deflated the object from its centre
Start Flare and End Flare – a similar control to ‘curve’, but works on either the top or bottom of the cylinder to inflate and deflate on either the x, y, or z axis.
The ‘sine’ deformer creates a S curve using its handle. It therefore has an ‘amplitude’ and ‘wavelength’ control in its inputs.
Offset – keeps the wave going
The ‘squash’ deformer also has its own inputs
Factor – squashes and stretches maintaining volume.
Expand – the amount of expansion around the shapes centre
The ‘twist’ deformer includes a ‘start and end’ angle, which changes the rotation of each end of the cylinder
The ‘wave’ deformer has a spherical handle. Similar to sine but works as a spherical pattern.
Amplitude – pushes and pulls based on the waveform.
Wavelength – the amount of waves along the handle.
Playblast
Deformers Part 2: Blend Shapes with Inbetweens
A lattice is created around our object. Lowering the subdivisions to 2 creates the simplest lattice possible, and the 4 lattice points can be moved to sculpt the character.
The lattice s used to deform two additional variations of our character, creating some blend mode targets.
As standard ‘blend shape’ setup; a slider in the shape editor that graduates the original character in-between the squashed and stretched variations on either side.
The two extremes on either side of the original character are then ‘hard-wired’ into a single character using the ‘blend shape options’ and the sliders in ‘shape editor’.
A control is created and linked up to the character using the connection editor.
Some simple animation is created using the graph editor and the ‘squash’ attribute that has now been created.
Applying the bend deformer will create a handle, as seen in the outliner window. This handle has its own controls in the viewport when selected, and is connected to the object through ‘inputs’.
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