Modeling with NURBS,Subdivisions, and Deformers - Introducing Maya 2011 - page 200

The alien hand in Figure 5.68 was created by adjusting the polygonal hand from this
exercise using only lattices.
As you can see, lattices give you powerful editing capabilities without the complication
of dealing with surface points directly. Lattices can help you reshape an entire complex
model quickly or adjust minor details on parts of a larger whole.
In Chapter 8, “Introduction to Animation,” you'll animate an object using another
type of deformer. You'll also learn how to deform an object through a path.
Figure 5.68
The human hand
model is trans-
formed into an alien
hand by using lat-
tices to deform the
geometry.
Animating through a Lattice
Lattices don't only work on polygons; they can be used on any geometry in Maya and at
any stage in your workflow to create or adjust models. You can also use lattices to create
animated effects. In the next exercise, you'll animate an object through a simple lattice.
In the previous example, if you moved the hand geometry through the lattice while
it was still applied to one of the fingers, you should have seen an interesting effect before
you deleted the last of your lattices. The parts of the geometry of the hand deformed as
the hand traveled through the lattice. Think of ways you can use this warping effect in an
animation. For example, you can create the effect of a balloon squeezing through a pipe
by animating the balloon geometry through a lattice.
In the following exercise, you'll create a NURBS sphere with 8 sections and 16 spans,
and an open-ended NURBS cylinder that has no end caps:
1. Choose Create ➔ NURBS Primitives ➔ Sphere r , and set the Sections to 8 and Spans
to 16 and create the sphere.
2. Choose Create ➔ NURBS Primitives ➔ Cylinder r , and check None for the Caps
option. Scale and arrange the sphere balloon and cylinder pipe as shown in
Figure 5.69.