Maya 2016.5 - How to animate an objet inside a lattice?


#1

Hi

I rigged the eyes of my character with a lattice, so i can reshape the round eyes into egg shape and all other object move through smothly…but now i want to create dramatic expresions and changethe shape of yhe eyes eve further…but i dont know how to key the points of the lattice…and i think it wont be the best way to go… so how to key deformations on a lattice?


#2

If I recall my days with maya, you do a cluster selection of the latice points, and keyframe the cluster. Nowadays there must be a more efficient way, though.


#3

“nowadays”… heheh. You make it sound like autodesk have touched their rigging toolset within the last 15 years :wink:


#4

hehe I meant sculpting blend shapes. I believe the tools were optimized in version 2017? Looks like a fun way to add expressions to your characters.

http://www.creativebloq.com/maya/how-animate-character-blend-shapes-10134835


#5

That’s the way to do it, as far as I know nothing changed about it. You can select ie the upper lattice points, cluster them. Instead of keyframing it directly, I constrain the cluster to an animation control etc and then repeat as needed for the other lattice points.

Cheers!


#6

But what happens if the animation is more like a blendshape? if you edit the original object to deform larger than the lattice, it will destroy the mesh after it goes farther than the cluster, how you keep this deformations from been affected from cluster cage limits, could you change the lattice to affect the same objec but unlimited from the lattice shape?