Constraining deformation?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi guys!

This is my first time using blender for work to make an animation of a tool. I’m trying to get a rubber element to deform out when force is applied to it from 2 sides but keep some of its shape. I have applied the maintain volume constraint and used keyframes and scaling to get it almost right but there are a few problems.

What I ideally want to do is constrain the faces touching the red highlighted parts so they do not deform and keep the blue highlighted area touching. So all expansion is done on the green highlighted area. Would the ‘clamp to’ constraint be the best for this? My understanding is this might apply to the whole object so nothing would move.

I have previously tried using soft body physics on the object but I couldn’t quite get that to work either.

Any help would be great!

Thanks in advance,

Aldrez.

help 2.jpg1920×1080 343 KB

2

If you have enough geometry for your rubber element, you could create a shape key with the desired deformation and animate that.

3

Cheers Mobimo! I found a quick tutorial on youtube to show me how to work through it and it seems to be working ok fine so far. I still have the maintain volume constraint on but it seems not to be doing anything. Is there a way to use the shape key but it to be constrained by the maintain volume constraint? So that when I push and pull it, the internal volume is the same? I had a quick scan and there seems to be a few types of shape keys, would that be a relative shape key?

Thanks in advance,

Aldrez