Deforming Help

[bumpsetspike]

I have a model of an object that is similar to a human spine.  I need to animate it bending back and forth like a blade of grass in the wind.  When a use a lattice deformer, it bends just fine except it increase the mass of the object by stretching it.  This, of course, is not realistic.  Is it possible to deform something without altering its mass?  Thanks in advance!

[joojaa]

Yes.

When a use a lattice deformer, it bends just fine except it increase the mass of the object by stretching it.

Its not the fault of laticce. Its just thats what you do, see your supposed to shorten the laticce!

But why dont you use bones or the bend deformer?

[bumpsetspike]

I don't quite understan your response.  To simplify things, I will just talk about the object as if it were a curve.  If I want it to manually model it to sway in the wind (without the use of force in dynamics), if I pull at a point in the middle of the curve, the top an bottom will stay in exactly the same place while the middle stretches.  Can the rest of the curve react to this so that the curve maintains its exact length during the transformaiton?  Not sure if this makes sense.  Thanks

[bumpsetspike]

Okay, now I think I get it.  I just don't see how I could shrink the lattice an know if it is exactly the same length.  The bend tool, doesn't seem to be very adjustable but I will mess around with it some more.  I will look into bones (my object is not actually a spine though, just spine like). 

[bumpsetspike]

The problem I am having with blend is that I need the bottom to stay in place while the rest moves.  If I lock the bottom, only the top half of it will bend while the bottom half stays in place.  If not for this issue, bend is exactly what I want.

[bumpsetspike]

Turns out I can move the bend handle down to the bottom so that the hole thing bends, I just need to figure our how to increase the bend radius circle.