Question: I am modeling a character that will fade parts of it body in stripes like the Cheshire Cat from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.
I want to keep the parts that fade out solid and have the parts that are visible flex and compress so that when animated the visible stripes stay equidistant apart.
Maybe this isn’t clear, I will make up a picture right now to show. (Edit: Here is the sketch)
I think I’ve got down how to do the alpha channel disappearing part. Can you guys help me out with how I should model and rig it?
Umm, off the top of my head, can’t think of anything resourse-wise … but you could TRY deleting faces only and leaving edges, and see if the edges act as spacers for your animation.
Do armatures even deform vertexs differently if they’re connected? If not, you wouldn’t need to worry about it all.
maybe it could be as simple as just animating the textures alpha… I think it’s possible. haven’t tried it yet in blender. just model the piece as one mesh then add the textures with alpha so the pieces you want to disappear, disappear. then if you want it to fade out in an anim or something, I think you can set a key for textures then fade the alpha in or out. THats the way I would try it first, since that sounds like the easiest way (to me). Oh but I don’t know that would keep them equidistant. try it and see. you might have to bake the textures.
If you use a UV texture, with a striped pattern as the image, the ‘bending’ (actually called taper) will occur as Blender applies the image to the mesh. So, model it like a cat; start with modeling one side and use the mirror modifier to fill in the other side. Rig it using a four-legged animal rig. Sounds simpler than it is, but take your time. There;s a thread about an anime manga? maid girl here recently that should help you too.
It looks like to keep those blank stripes to stay the same size that you would have to go in and do vertex animation, Or possibly, set each blank stripe to have a different segment of the armature control it and let the colored stripe float between them.
