Flower animation Progress

11/3/23

This image shows some of the previous tests for the flower model for the animation.

The one on the right was an attempt at a flower which I made before this project which I made to experiment with rotated arrays (This wasn't really the right technique to use for the flower I am making for this project, as you can see with the left of that, it doesn't look very organic when the rotation is even. I did end up using an array for the centre of the current model that I am working on)

For the middle model (left of the right flower) I tried using simple deform like I mentioned in a previous blog. This didn't turn out great since there was little control and it was a bit hard to control.

The model on the left is the closest to the current version of the model (out of the three in the image) I used the petal to the right and made use of the linking feature to make petals with the same animation. For the animation, I made two shape key shapes and I sized up the petals as I added more. This wasn't super organic and the petals overlapped quite a bit, so I decided to use a similar technique to get where I currently am. 

At the time of making this blog, this is what I have done so far, I am happy with how the petals all look slightly different since I edited the shape key "poses?" individually after copying them from the previous petal. So that the petals are consistent yet unique. I also focused more on how the petals were layered and made sure that they look nice when closed. 

I used vertex blend from shape (select shape key) while selecting a new (basis state) shape key after creating the first shape key since the basis (basic shape) was the flat petal seen in the previous image. This is because new shape keys are the same as the basis.

To make sure the petals don't glitch into each other too much, I changed the material of the petal I was editing to a different coloured material so I could see where they overlap.

I am uncertain about the centre of the flower and also some of the shape keys don't animate perfectly. But overall I am happy with the progress so far.