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Modeling > Modeling Characters > Skin

Skin


Use the Skin command to deform a surface or a group of surfaces using other surfaces or limbs. For example, you can create a character with various surfaces and then create a group of deforming surfaces, which you could animate to make the character walk, talk and smile.

Example: Using skin
  1. Create a sphere. Choose Modeling > Preset Surfaces > Sphere.
  2. Scale the sphere to 5 times its original size on all three axes.
  3. Create a cone, a cube, and a cylinder and place them inside the sphere.
  4. In the World Explorer, first select the sphere, then Shift-select the cube, the cone and the cylinder.
  5. The first surface selected will be the skin and the others will be the deformers.

    Note: To deform several surfaces at the same time, for example, a foot, a sock and a shoe, you must group them, then select the group, and then Shift-select all the deformers. You can also create a second group containing all the deformers.

  6. Choose Modeling > Skin.
  7. A Skin deformation appears under the sphere in the World Explorer.

  8. Select any of the three deformers and scale, rotate and translate them.
  9. Notice how the sphere is deformed. Each vertex of the sphere follows the closest deformers according to a weighting proportional to their distance from each of the deformers. It follows the center of the deformer objects; the size of the objects is not important. In the following illustration, the top part of the sphere is mainly affected by the cone.

    Note: To remove the deformation, delete the Skin in the World Explorer, then adjust the sphere parameters in the Parameter Editor. The sphere is redrawn based on its geometry parameter settings.


See also:

1 bone limbs

2 bone limbs

Using home state

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