Using A Lattice To Deform An Object

[mike-milo]

Hi all,
I want to set up an irregular shaped sphere (an eye), attach a lattice to it, then set up an Aim Constraint and attach it to a locator and the eyeball geometry so that when I move the locator, the sphere deforms and stays inside the lattice. I want to create irregular shaped eyes looking at something and I dont want them to go thru the geometry around them.

A guy I know did it once for me and I've since lost contact with the guy AND lost my notes on this. I've tried to do it but it doesn't seem to work. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? ANy help would greatly be appreciated!

[failure]

constrain the lattice

or if you're talking about keeping the deformation in place while rotating the eye then just constrain the eye and set Outside Lattice in ffd attributes to "All" to avoid popping.

[mike-milo]

I tried that as well and it works nice on a new piece of geometry but not on the eyes I built. I added a link to the file I mentioned.
http://www.milowerx.com/milowerx/badeyes.zip

[failure]

Ok, here's what you should do ( from the scratch )

-create a sphere - don't scale it or anything else, it must be perfect sphere with pivot in center
- add a ffd to it
- constrain sphere to a locator
- use ffd to shape the sphere into eye, don't move points or transform it with scale/rotate etc.
- parent ffd to whatever you need in hierarchy ( head )

[mike-milo]

Ahhhhh! That makes perfect sense! Thanks Failure! You rock!

[mike-milo]

But wait, it's not working. I did exactly what you said and it didn't work. What could I be doing wrong? What settings are you using for the Lattce and the Aim Constraint? Maybe I have them messed up. When I do it,the eye pops to a new pivot. Arrrrrgh!