Maya 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide

13. Deformers

Maya’s deformers allow you to reshape geometry in a variety of ways. They can speed up many modeling tasks, from adjusting a model’s proportions to adding detailed wrinkles to a high-resolution mesh. Deformers are also useful for animation, whether you want to create ripples across a surface or make a character smile (Figure 13.1).

Figure 13.1. This alien’s smile was created with a blend shapes deformer.

Maya’s deformers include the nonlinear deformers bend, flare, sine, squash, twist, and wave; as well as the blend shapes, lattices, clusters, sculpt, jiggle, wire, wrinkle, and wrap deformers. All these deformers have various settings ...