Tutorial by Rick Valleyview:
I have plans for writing a tutorial
to make an animated figure (bones, constraints, edge fill, etc), all that's
needed is time.
For now I'll assume You know the basics of bones.
Let's make a can with 3 sections. To make
bones work decent You should at least have 1 or 2 sections in between Your
bone sections (the more sections, the smoother the bends). So we'll make a
can with 7 vertical sections.
Put an axis at the bottom of section 1 (the
bottom one), section 4, and section 7 (top). In the attribute requester name
them bot, mid, and top.
Enter Pick Group mode. Click on mid, then
top: Group them. Click on bot, then multiclick mid. Group them. Click on the
can axis (which now becomes the parent), then multiclick bot. Group them.
Make this Your "DEFAULT" state.
Pick Face mode. Multipick the top row of points
(faces of top of can). Make this Your Small Bone Subgroup for the "top"
axis. Multipick the top 3 sections of the can. These are Your Big Bone
Subgroup for "top". Multipick the top 4 sections of the can. Make these Your
Small Bone Subgroup for "mid". Multipick the top 6 sections of
the can. Big Bone Subgroup for "mid". Multipick all sections of the can and
make Your Small Bone Subgroup for "bot". We'll also use all sections for Big
Bone Subgroup for "bot". This allows us to deform the whole can without moving
the "bot" axis.
There are two ways to twist our can.
Direct method:
Pick Group mode. Pick "top" or "mid" and rotate
them around Z. Click on can axis. Click on "Update Bones" menu item. We
can also rotate around X or Y to bend the can over. Try it.
Set "State" to "DEFAULT".
Inverse method:
Pick Object mode. Pick can axis.
"Freeze" all world axis. Pick "Constrain" menu item. Pick "top" axis. Rotate
and see all 3 axis rotate differant amounts. Pick Group mode. Pick can
axis and "Update Bones". Again You can also move, which affects all the bones to
bend the can.
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