September 2011

Sep 30 2011

Squash and stretch

One of the most fundamental (and important) rules in animation is the use of squash and stretch which is used to give the illusion of weight and volume as an object moves.

Open the scene Ball_Rig.scn. Select the Ball and from the Get > Primitive menu choose Lattice. In the Lattice PPG, change the Subdivision on all three axis’s to 2 and close the PPG. With the Lattice still selected, press [T] to set the selection filter to points and select the top nine points on the lattice. From the Main Command Panel (MCP) > Edit menu choose Create Cluster with Centre. This creates a null object and automatically constrains the selected points to that null, meaning that if you move (or scale) the null the corresponding part of the lattice will move as well.

Sep 15 2011

Surface constraint and transformation

While constraining an object to a surface as such is a straightforward task and won’t require more than a few mouse clicks, it may still leave you with a sensation of not being quite satisfied. Once you add the constraint you loose the option to freely move the object with the standard translate tool and are left with two (somewhat less intuitive) sliders within a PPG. By adding an extra dummy object to the mix, you’ll effectively manage to get the most out of both approaches.