how do I animate the shape of an object?

Technical Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi,

This is probably really simple, but I can’t make it work…

I want to turn a thin rectangle into a thicker rectangle over the course of 25 frames… Then I want to stretch it out from one corner.

I assumed I could do this by hitting “I” to generate a keyframe, and then choosing the “Mesh” command, but it doesn’t seem to work…

I’ve had no trouble in animating size, location, rotation, etc… But this seems a bit different… Aniamting by scale won’t really do it, as I need to change the shape of the object too. I’ve tried looking in a few tutorials, but haven’t found one that describes what I need to do.

thanks

2

I think this might be “vertex keyframing”? I heard Grey beard refer to it in his IPO curve and keyframing tutorial, but he said vertex keyframing was going to be a different tut. Haven’t seen it yet…

3

Download the html help files and do a search for lattice and another for IPO. Add a size IPO to the lattice for the dimensions that you want to scale. It may take you a little while to learn to work with IPOs if you don’t already know how, but they become second nature rather quickly. By using a lattice you leave yourself the option of not actually distorting the original mesh and moving the mesh into and out of the lattice will cause it to warp and unwarp.

4

I think it’s called “Relative Vertex Keys” in the Blender Manual, apparently, you can change vertices location with relativity/respect to another.

The tutorial uses a head model, creating winks and smiles by adjusting vertices.

Good luck,

Wolf

5

I think it’s called “Relative Vertex Keys” in the Blender Manual

These are now called Shape Keys and can be found in the Wiki here:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartVIII/Shape_Keys

Use shape keys to store a bunch of mesh alterations and ‘morph’ between them, or combine them. They are excellent for facial expressions as noted above.