Animating open a flower

[jagwar]

Hello all,

I've been giving this some thought and I can't figure out what way would be best to go about animating a flower open. The thing is I have 1 flower model that I plan on using multiple times in a scene, and I was hoping I could give the flower a general animation first that I could then duplicate and change bits and pieces on each instance to make each flower open animation unique from each other.

I've concidered setting up a skeleton rig, using wire deformers or blend shapes. I just can't figure out which way would be most effiencet and easy to handle and what would give the best result.

Quick render of the model is attached.

Appreciative for any input!

Best,
Christian

[joojaa]

Blendsahpe, no question about it.

[jagwar]

Cool appreciate it. How would I go about getting the motion right though, since each pedal would just morph between 2 states?

[joojaa]

You asked for the most efficient and easy to handle taht makes a good end result*. Not easiest to make.

since each pedal would just morph between 2 states?

Nothing says so they can morph between X sattes. The blendshape tool is often misunderstood because the GUI isnt powerful enough to describe all it can do.

Yes lot of people claim it can just do linear moves. Thats sort of true, but hey even a nurbs or bezier curve is just a bunch of linear moves multiplied by a nonlinear constant. So in a way even curves in 3d software are mostly based on linear moves. But at the end of the day that means you can have nonlinear moves with blendshapes for the same reason. Sure the GUI doesn't help you sort that out. But thats no reason to say theres nothing in the blendshape node that say you cant do this.

in any case blendshape has a special axis for making one blend actually consist of many sequential targets, its just a buit hard to get done in a GUI except for one blend axis. However the script interface allows you to define as many axes as you like.

*best is not defined. it depends on stuff that i can not know about you.

[vikash-kumar--7]

Look into:
Edit Deformers > Blend Shape > Add > 
You can make the flower go through all the shapes you need with a little planning.  The Maya docs explain it pretty well.  Just practice with a simple sphere until you get the concept down.  You'll end up modeling your flower in a series of progressively opening states and then adding them as in-between target blends.   People have been doing facial animation like this forever.  Actually fun when you get the hang of it.

[jagwar]

I will try this guys, thanks much!

Best,
Christian