Hi,
I’m making an animation of a tool that polishes the edge of a large block of stone. The edge goes from 90° straight (_|) to 45° (|).
Now to make a decent animation I always had a right edge hiding to 45°-edge. When the tool started to move forward, the right edge would move simultaneously, thus revealing the 45°-edge.
I was wondering if there isn’t a correcter way to do it…
Like a function that enables an object to deform another object in animation time.
Kinds regards,
Smedtje.
You could try to use shapekeys and actually move vertices to produce what you want. By keying the influence of the shape key you can actually deform the object during animation.
See http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Shape_Keys
Another way would be to use a lattice to deform the block.
Using hooks you can actually key the deformation on the lattice.
And a thrid way is to use hooks directly on the block.
See http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Hooks for hooks
and http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation/Lattice_Animation for lattice deformation.
Another way to do this, would be to animate a Boolean cut. You would need too cutting objects. One that is not rendered but that actual creates the Boolean Difference object. And another that represents the real world cutter, but that does not actually figure into the Boolean. Here is a quick test if you care.
BooleanCut.blend (169 KB)
Note: You need a lot of verts to make the Boolean work well. So, for something simply like a 45 degree bevel they are OK. But anything more complex, you should go with shape keys like Musk said.
First of all thx for helping out 
@ Musk: I learned something with your method, but it will be too much manual labour. I prefer the cheating method I use then
@ DichotomyMatt: Hehehe, I came up with the same test. It works fine, untill you have too let it make a turn. There the Boolean method doesn’t follow the turn and so you can’t apply it.
Are you trying to route a bevel all the way around a surface? Like the top edge of a counter-top for example?