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I'm trying to animate wrapping a dodecahedron. I tried to use one object with shapekeys (rotate Y+Y with normal mode), but I can't parent the animations, any ideas? Now I made separate objects but now I don't know how animate on a specific axis in object mode.

enter image description here

Sazerac
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LDCO
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  • Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28829/set-edge-as-axis-for-surface-rotation/28831 – Denis Feb 23 '17 at 05:25
  • No, it's not related. I was asking about PARENTING all the rotations, not how to rotate each pentagon. – LDCO Feb 23 '17 at 06:03

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I suggest using an armature to animate the wrapping.

Animating a rotation with shape keys will lead to deformed faces during the animation as the shape key only considers the location of the vertices. Between two keyframes the location is interpolated on a straight line.
Displayed below are two planes which get rotated by 45 degrees. The red plane is rotated by entering the angle in the transformation field while the blue plane uses a shape key with rotated vertices.

rotations

By using an armature you can avoid this deformation.
The bones' heads should be placed at the dodecahedron's edges and the tails at the center of the faces. I assume the best way to achieve this is to alternate using Shift+S > Cursor to Selection and Selection to Cursor.

armature

The default rotation mode for bones is Quaternion. You can switch to one of the Euler angle modes to get the correct rotation axis. Gimbal lock should be no problem in this case as you're rotating on only one axis.

rotation mode

binweg
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  • ok, but how can I rotate the bones along the axe I need? – LDCO Feb 23 '17 at 09:15
  • @LDCO By changing the rotation mode of the bones from the default quaternion to one of the Euler angle modes (e.g. XYZ). – binweg Feb 23 '17 at 09:51
  • I actually achieved to make it, (you are right about the deformation in case of shape keys - I even opened another question about it - before I saw your answer to this one ) the problem is I don't understand how I made it - I mean the bones orientation mode. Now I understand - euler angle modes... – LDCO Feb 23 '17 at 10:44
  • Got it: It should be made with separate, shapekeyed, pentagons, and parented by "vertex parent". – LDCO Feb 23 '17 at 04:57