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I've this butterfly model and I want it to fly.

when I add shape keys and rotate the wing in edit mode, the wing stretches and get a weird shape, like this: enter image description here

I see some areas aren't selected when I select the wing, maybe this is the cause?

I'm new to Blender. thanks for any tip in advance.

Blendester
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1 Answers1

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That could perhaps be the distortion you ran into. I looked at your model and you shouldn't need to use shape keys or rotate the wings in edit mode. It comes with an armature that you can use to move and animate it. It looks a little complex, so take some time to play around with it, and do some reading on armatures if you need to.

Edit: I think your idea about vertices not being selected is most likely the answer. Editing for shapekeys is basically the same as ordinary editing, so I don't think the shapekeys themselves would cause that problem. (Artist put lock on hind wings-see last paragraph below.)

In general, though, shapekeys are not used for large rotations because they don't work well for that. The individual vertices move to their new positions by the shortest route, and the mesh can become quite distorted in the middle positions. I know - I tried to shapekey fingers once.

If you need something to rotate in a specific way and don't want to use an armature (I still haven't made peace with armatures) you can set the origin to the spot where you want it to pivot and then use rotation to move it. You can even set rotation locks so it will only move in one or two axes (click the locks in the Transform/Rotation menu in 3D view - if you can't see it try pressing N).

Change pivot or local origin of an object

In trying to pivot the wings just now, it seems the artist has tethered the bottom of the hind wing to the body - not sure how he did that, it would be interesting to find out. That could be the distortion you ran into. Apparently this is how the butterfly actually works, but you have to rotate it on 2 axes to get it to look right. You can read about it in the comments here: http://blog.hawkbats.com/2011/03/07/3d-commission-models-and-art/

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Paula Grisell-Goldstein
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  • Thanks.. I see it hasn't an armature on the wings, only legs? I don't know much but I'll try to go that way.. – Blendester Nov 13 '16 at 22:36
  • but can you please tell me how to avoid that mess generally? – Blendester Nov 13 '16 at 22:40
  • I didn't see the armature on the wings either, but I did see some empties that might be linked, and a big box that looked like it could be a control structure, and I thought I saw some control circles around the body, but actually none of those are working for me, either. I also didn't see any controls for the feelers.Maybe the rig is broken somehow? Anyway, you can still move all of those – Paula Grisell-Goldstein Nov 14 '16 at 13:05
  • Sorry- you can still move any of those parts by using rotate and they will turn on their origins and should pose nicely. Just be sure if you are animating that you keyframe all the parts that are not using the armature, as well as the armature. – Paula Grisell-Goldstein Nov 14 '16 at 13:08
  • I'm having trouble editing the comments, so I'm going to add to my original answer... – Paula Grisell-Goldstein Nov 14 '16 at 13:11