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How would you animate a cube in Blender Cycles Engine to transform it smoothly into a human model I already made?

  • If you mean exploding meshes and recombining them afterwards then this could be related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42349/mesh-breaking-apart-and-recombining-to-form-another-mesh. If morphing, i.e. smooth transition, then Cast modifier (probably along with Shrinkwrap) really can be your first option to consider. – Mr Zak May 11 '16 at 15:44

2 Answers2

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Best bet is to use the Cast Modifier to morph the cylinder into a sphere shape.

The trick to get it to work well is:

  1. Have a good number of evenly spaced edge loops along the cylinder length as well as concentric edge loops on both caps

  2. Then set the mesh surface shading to Smooth and add a 1 level Subsurf Modifier before the Cast Modifier

  3. Select Sphere as the cast type and then you can keyframe the Factor from 0 to 1

  4. You may need to increase the Radius amount if the cylinder is longer than my example.


enter image description here

Todd McIntosh
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  • Thanks, is there a way to do more complicated mesh too like if you have a model of a human to transform them into a cube? –  May 11 '16 at 01:06
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    You might have to use a shape key animation on the human mesh to get it closer to the cube shape before using the cast modifier technique. – Todd McIntosh May 11 '16 at 01:13
  • How would that be done? Wouldn't I have to remodel the whole human again starting out with a cube to use shape keys? –  May 11 '16 at 01:15
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    @AustinH. please [edit] your original question so that it reflects what you really want to do. –  May 11 '16 at 02:35
  • Okay, edited the question. –  May 11 '16 at 02:39
  • @AustinH. You wouldn't necessarily have to start with a cube and remodel your human. You could just turn the human you have into a cube ;-) – Matt May 11 '16 at 16:14
  • How would that be done? –  May 11 '16 at 16:15
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Select your model and go to Properties->Data->Shape Keys. Click "add" 2 times. Select the second shape key and go into edit mode. Now transform your mesh until it looks like a cube. Do not remove any vertices. Leave edit mode. You can now animate the "value" slider to switch between both states. You most likely want to add more shape keys to make the animation smoother.

If you can't put your model into a perfect cube form, add a cube to the second shape key and scale your model down until it's completely hidden in the cube.

piegames
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