Interactive Deformations

Deformations can sometimes be a lot of work, especially when it comes to keyframing realistic movements. This technique shows you how to interactively deform your objects when colliding with a surface. I’m sure this could be taken further but the concept and initial spark are what I’m focusing on here. The mesh deformer is one of the most powerful deformers in my opinion. Here we supercharge with Xpresso to limit its deformations based on point position. The Xpresso is fairly simple and only deals with deforming the mesh’s points via the point node to make sure they don’t go past where they are supposed to.

The second trick is getting the shape back to its original position which is done with another incredibly powerful tool, the Pose Morph Tag. This gives the mesh we are deforming a place to bounce back to so that we don’t destructively edit the deformers shape. I would love to hear how you guys use this or build upon it in your projects! Grab the scene file below and take a look under the hood:)

I’ve also gotten a good number of questions on how the bend deformer setup was done on the toe of the shoe. It’s a simple xpresso setup that ties the rotation of the shoe to the bend strength shown in the images below. The trick is to place the bend deformer in a good spot for deformation. If you have further questions feel free to shoot me a message:)