Rigging a Cube With Squash and Stretch. (part 2 of 2): Making an Animated Movie (#5) Video Lecture | A Guide to Making an Animated Movie - Professional Skills

alright guys you ready for some rigging
let's see what we have here this is the
cube the first thing I did after
creating this mesh which is basically
just your regular cube and I added some
some edge loops and subdivisions I think
I did like 10 and you know when you
smooth it looks pretty much the same I
just added some edge loops on the sides
here so then I added a joint to each one
of the corners here using the joint tool
hope you all know that tool using that
tool I added a joint you don't even have
to connect the joints just add a single
joint to each one of those corners then
I added a control which is basically a
curved round curve for each one of those
corners and I parented the joint to
those controls so these controls control
the joints then I added a big control
for the top and for the bottom and I
parented all of these little controls to
the big control so he controls all of
them imagine the cube let's just get rid
of the queue for now so you see these
controls control all the joints the next
thing I did was build the lattice so I
selected my cube let's just do it on a
separate one for a second created a
former and created a lattice I kept the
division to two so the lattice
in case you don't know what it does is
pretty cool I'll lock the cube for a
second so the lattice can help you
deform stuff it's a deform ER and the
cool thing about a lattice is that you
can skin it which mean you can add you
can use joints and skin them to the
lattice instead of skinning the actual
geometry so that's exactly what I did I
selected all these joints and then
selected the lattice and get a smooth
bind skin after I did that these joints
controlled the lattice and that's what
you're seeing here that's the result
you're staying here so that way I can
use my main control to do this cool the
forming thing so that's how I got the
basic control for shaping the cube so
now I can move it I can make it rotate
and you know all these things but the
tricky part was the squash and stretch
you see here when I I go higher you kind
of stretches in the middle and when I go
lower kind of you know implode a little
bit so that's kind of hard to get that
wasn't so simple
I tried blend change didn't really work
it might work for you but for this I
needed more control because even if you
do use blend shapes then I would only be
able to associate them with one of the
controllers so I mean that might work
but then what if I used I wanted to use
the bottom one it wouldn't it wouldn't
react in the same way because I would
have to use set driven key for the top
controller and then make maybe make more
blend shapes and use them for bottom
controller and it will just be so
complicated and there's really no need
for that because what I discovered is
pretty cool I'm going to show you right
now I created a second lattice let's do
it on this cube it's blocked
I created a second ladder
with an extra division in the middle so
that's extra that extra division allowed
me to control the shrinking inside and
outside that's what I was going to
control
so I created a cluster with these four
lattice points together let's do that
create a cluster then you have one one
kind of control for all of these and you
can scale it and I added this control
this curve and parented the cluster to
the controls and now this huge control
curve control the scaling of it right
now it doesn't control the scaling
because I did some expressions here
which I'm going to show you right now
but basically when this round thing
scales up the cube looks as if it's
fatter and when it scales down it's
shrinks so what did I do
I used the distance tool under
measurements measurement tool distant
tool and I measure the distance from top
to bottom I have this didn't really work
you should kind of snap it top to bottom
okay so we have from zero to ten then
once you have the measurement tool set
up I go to the expression editor and in
the expression editor I had two
expressions the first one says that the
squash control scale X that's the squash
control the one we parented to the
cluster who controls the middle lattice
that's the squash control so he's
scaling of x equals to the distance
dimension shape one which is
this guy the distance demon
that's the distance between the top and
bottom measurement points that we had so
the squash would be equal to the
distance but we need to divide the
distance by 10 because our measurement
are currently at 10 if we didn't do that
it would actually scale it 10 times so
you see if I change that for a second
and remove that edit you see it's
scaling it by 10 so if your measurement
would be if your measurement tool
reached a higher point than 10 just
divided by whatever number that is so
that that really that expression
basically saying that the higher the
dimension is the distance the more you
scale the X and then we need to do
another expression for scaling the Z we
don't need to scale the Y it's just the
X and the Z so these two expressions are
exactly the same one of them is for the
X scale one of those for the Z scale and
now when I move the top controller who
by the way also controls the locator for
the measurement tool right
we had to parent these locators to the
bottom and top controls for the cube
otherwise it wouldn't change when I move
it but look at the measurement tool you
see the numbers when I raise it the
numbers go up and as the numbers go up
the cube the lattice of the middle of
the cube scales skills up or skills down
doesn't matter so that's a very very
simple way of you of giving anything
squash and stretch and stretch now some
stuffing into the bear in mind let me
just get rid of this cube over here
these things I put
Kuban all over so I created another
control called an all mover and I put
everything in it just something you need
to keep in mind is leave the main
lattice the first one that we did out of
the main control and these two clusters
because if you put them in it's going to
have like a double deformation and it's
not going to work the first lattices
base should be under them the whole
mover and the second lattice - now we're
going to go into why but just know that
otherwise you want to work that way I
can move the queue however I want and do
this it still works
now the way I got the squash to be so
nice and smooth because you saw before
that it wasn't really squashing it in a
smooth way is by change changing the
second lattices the local influences so
if you see the default was to I think
and you see that it looks kind of like
squarish it's not smooth so I just
raised it you know as much as much as
you want doesn't really matter
alright so these are the two expressions
I'm gonna I'm going to write them down
in the description so you can copy/paste
them if you if you're doing the same
thing and if you have any questions
about this or something that they really
explain you can just ask me in the
comment section below as always don't
forget to subscribe you can check out
our new blog at loot animation calm
there we're going to post most of our
video tutorials but also some written
articles so it's worth checking it out
thanks for watching