Introduction to Lattices

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1

Just wrote the Introduction to Lattices in Noob to Pro. It’s not final but the fundamentals for using Lattice Modifiers in 2.4+ are all there.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Basic_Animation/Lattice

Basic Lattice animation will come soon.

Comments welcome.

UPDATE:
Added introduction to Lattice animation and screenshots. (4th Sept 06).

2

Hi Andy -
Looking good. If you add some well-chosen screenshots, it would really shine. Specifically, screenshots of the following would help:

*the Lattice panel
*the lattice as soon as it’s added (showing how it’s probably the wrong size for the object)
*the lattice once it’s scaled to fit the object
*Modifier panel with a Lattice modifier added
*deformed lattice with deformed object
*deformed lattice with modifier removed (showing the un-deformed object)
*same lattice, but with more UV points

Any reason you chose to write on the Noob to Pro instead of the Blender manual? The Lattice page on the manual could use some more details on the basics and would definitely benefit from your exercises:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartII/Modelling/Modifier/Lattice_deform

-Ryan

3

Thanks Ryan,

I will definitely be adding some screenshots once I’ve got it pretty well fleshed out. I will use the suggestions you made plus some examples of one simple shape deformed multiple ways with a Lattice (sort of a whacky-mirrror effect)

The only reasons I put it in Noob to Pro is because it complemented one of my previous Tutes (bouncing ball) and someone had mentioned that the Lattice Modifier wasn’t mentioned elsewhere in that wiki. I will take a look at the doc wiki too and see if there’s anything I can do there but I thought it already had a pretty thorough explanation of Lattices - I have previously fixed errors in the official docs but when it comes to a major re-write, I’m more comfortable writing my own doc from scratch than taking a hatchet to someone else’s work.

I don’t recall seeing a Latice Animation doc so when I’ve got that bit pretty much sorted, I might include it (or a version of it) in the official docs too.

I think Noob to Pro still has a lot of value and can comfortably sit alongside the docs so long as people keep it up to date. What I would REAAALLLY like to see is for someone to eradicate the old HTML docs that reference 2.3 and earlier. They cause more trouble these days than they’re worth :slight_smile:

4

Added screenshots and animation section.

5

Thank You!

6

This looks useful - could I use it to make muscles flex, a bit like shape keys?

7

yeah irony you could definitely do that, it’s a hell of a lot faster and sometimes looks just as good. lattice animations rule… can’t wait to see it finished. I might use this for some text effects, also can you add lattices to an array, or an object inside an array? you could do some crazy shit with that…

8

I saw it just looking for lattices info. Its good. You all people who write good tutorials deserve credit.

9

Thanks :slight_smile:

I haven’t used Lattice on vertex groups but the option is there. Set a vertex group for a muscle region, place your lattice around it and enter the vertex group name in the text field in the Lattice modifier panel and see if you can get it to do what you want better than you could with shape keys.

I don’t know anything about arrays - yet - so I can’t help there.