Animating with Blender

The Mesh Deform Modifier

Figure 9.32 shows a cage surrounding both the mother mesh and the control armature. This cage is a regular mesh object, composed of triangles (not quads!) and fully enclosed (no holes). Every face of the character mesh is inside of it. This simple mesh, just over 300 vertices, acts as a controllable deformer for the high resolution character mesh. Pixar created the technique, and, after the release of their paper on the subject in 2007 (they call it harmonic coordinates), one of the Blender developers (Brecht van Lommel) implemented it for our animating pleasure. If you are looking for very sharp bends and creases in your deformations, this may not be the method you want to use due to its smooth nature. On the other ...