alexv
Nov-4-07	BF

New Mesh Deform Modifier

The MeshDeform modifier can deform a mesh with another 'cage' mesh. It is similar to a lattice modifier, but instead of being restricted to the regular grid layout of a lattice, the cage mesh can be modeled to fit the mesh better.

The cage mesh is a regular mesh object, but it must form a closed cage around the part of the mesh to be deformed. Only vertices within this cage will be deformed. Typically the cage mesh will have far fewer vertices than the target mesh. The distance of the cage vertices to the target mesh is useful to tweak the influence. Offsetting the cage far will give smooth but less local influence on the mesh below, while setting the cage closer will give more local control but less smoothing out of the influence.

After modeling the cage mesh, add a MeshDeform modifier,  fill in the cage mesh object name, and press the Bind button. This will compute the binding weights, which can take a while, from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the specified Precision. Setting the precision higher increases the accuracy, but can also make the binding process considerably slower.