project advice

# 1 28-10-2006 , 05:37 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 17

Hi all,

I trying to work out the best way to go about a particular project and wondered if you could help.

The plan is to animate a baby flying around a room like a deflating balloon. It needs to shrink and deform like a balloon would as it goes, but i also want it to flap its arms etc.

So here's the problem:

to easily do the poses, i need to rig a skeleton, but as far as I can see, this makes it very difficult to deform the body and more importantly scale it.

Any ideas on a way to do this. I was considering using shape blend to shrivel the baby, but will this work with a bound skin?

Cheers

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# 2 28-10-2006 , 06:24 AM

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Join Date: Jul 2006

Location: london

Posts: 519

Hey Vurt,

first thing you need to do before you bind the skin is create the necessary blendshapes you need.

Do a test animation from A to B, with no arm movement, using your keyframes. For example. Your baby would start at keyframe 1 and end at keyframe 48 lets say.

At frame one, this is how your baby will look fully deflated.

Go to frame 48 (or the frame the baby stops deflating). And duplicate it. Move the duplicate next to the original, and edit it (shrink it), to how you choose.

Now, select the duplicate, shift select the original and
Deform > Create Blendshapes ...tick the box and enter an appropriate name, then click create.

Now hide or delete the dup copy.

Go to frame 1. Select the baby. Go to Window > Animation Editors > Blendshape.

Press select then key.

Go to frame 48. Move the slider up, then press select then Key.

NOW you are ready to bind, then add movement to the limbs

good luck

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those who succeed are only the failures that never gave up.

https://www.vimeo.com/7080130

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# 3 28-10-2006 , 06:26 AM

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Join Date: Jul 2006

Location: london

Posts: 519

'At frame one, this is how your baby will look fully deflated'. *

Go to frame 48 (or the frame the baby stops deflating). And duplicate it. Move the duplicate next to the original, and edit it (shrink it), to how you choose.
**********************************************

Soz Vurt, i meant full 'inflated' not deflated. Im sure you guessed that. lol

those who succeed are only the failures that never gave up.

https://www.vimeo.com/7080130

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# 4 28-10-2006 , 06:44 AM

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Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: Los Angeles

Posts: 695

Another way would be to add a lattice deformer to your rigged character and while you animate the poses of your baby, use the lattice to warp the entire mesh and achieve the deflating look.

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# 5 28-10-2006 , 07:14 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 17

Aaah great, thats loads of help thanks,

one muore question though.... as the model gets smaller, won't the skeleton need to shrink? Not had much luck with scaling bones while skin is bound...

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