Hey guys, i’ve watched a couple of transformer videos on youtube and i watched a small “kind of” helpful tutorial but now i would like to sort of go a little beyond by actually sort of making a better looking transformer, like movement of different car parts to different places.
I tried to make an armature and lattice combo but it didn’t turn out so well:no:
can someone help me please? any is greatly appreciated 
-AJ
First off, stay away from lattices. They are very good, as is the mesh deform modifier, at organic deformations. Your talking about a car transforming into a robot (I assume). Both are mechanical objects and shouldn’t deform, but rather move parts from one location to another. Example: the front tire moves from the ground to the shoulder area. During the transformation, the tire may move or rotate, but it would never bend in half to look like a taco.
All parts of the mesh have to be separate mesh objects. Say the front bumper and front fenders at the end of the transformation would not be connected and have been rotated an moved away from each other, so they have to be separate mesh objects. Each object needs it’s own bone so it can be animated. Each mesh object gets parented to it’s bone, this way the mesh moves as the bone does, but never gets deformed, or changes it’s shape.
There is a lot of faking you can do as well. Motion blur and fast movements can really help to hide parts appearing from nowhere. Say you need a mesh object for the robot at the end of the transformation, that isn’t really part of the car, you can just make it appear, hidden behind another part as it rotates around and the blur and quick movement can help hide the fact it came from nowhere.
I’m working on a transformation of one household item to another. I have about 75 mesh objects and bones for the left side only, and I’m not finished yet.
I’d be interested in knowing what your transforming…
Randy
67 mustang 