If you’ve played around with Shape keys, you know that they are basically vertex key frames. They’re very handy for animating organic models in ways that are more difficult to accomplish with bones. They are especially useful for aspects of facial animation, or for augmenting weighted deformations, which are difficult to achieve perfection with. What may not be immediately obvious is their use with Curves…

Where is the Shapes panel for Curve objects?

I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a panel for working with Shape keys when I had a Curve object selected. After all, with Mesh objects, the Shapes panel is readily accessible. I never found one. However the Ipo window has a selection for “Shape.” and the Blender Wiki says that Shape keys work for a variety of data types:

You can define Absolute Shape Keys for:

• Meshes,
• Bezier and Nurbs Curves,
• Nurbs Surfaces, and
• Lattices.

Blender Wiki: Manual/Absolute Shape Keys

Well, I never found one, but it is possible, even easy, to add a Shape Key to a Curve. Like with any Shape keys, you’ll need your “basis” shape, and then your additional key, for whatever modifications you want to perform.

1. Select your Curve. With your mouse over the 3D Viewport, press “I” to insert a key, and choose “Curve.” This will be your “basis” key.
2. Repeat the process, pressing “I” and choosing “Curve.” This will be your modified Shape key.
3. Open the Ipo Editor and change the selector to “Shape.” You should see both keys for the Curve: the Basis shape, represented by a dashed line, “————”; you should also see “Key 1.”



4. With Key 1 selected, CTRL click in the Ipo window to add your keys.

You now have your shape keys, and you can select between them in the Ipo Editor. Select “Key 1″ then TAB into Edit mode for your Curve, and make changes to your Curve data. You can add keys as normal to interpolate between the Basis shape and the Shape key.

You’ll want to avoid switching between Shape keys while your Curve is in Edit mode, or your Shape key might get merged with your Basis key. This is typically good practice whether or not your working with Curve shapes.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.