Shape shifting

I was watching "Finding Nemo" the other day and noticed that the aquarium fish 'Bloat' [voiced by the talented Brad Garret] bloats....let me explain.

When he puffs up, what method is that used to make him do so? Is it just a morph target related thing? It's like he goes to a fish shape to a perfect ball.

I was wondering how the effect could be mimicked in Max or LW (I can access Max through my roomate, and I own LW6).

Thanks.

-Matt

 

Looks like morph points to me... I don't know about the deform tools in MAX or LW, but wings3d has a inflate deformer which when used can change any shape to a sphere... it takes a bit of figuring out (using magnets and such) to get the shape to blow up the way you want, but it can be done and then imported back into any other app.

Actually another way to do this would be with softbody dynamics. Create you shape (fish in this case) and have a properly positioned sphere parented with it. Set up the softbody to treat the sphere as an obstable and animate the radius of the sphere. With some tweaking you could get a similar effect.

 

Spherify modifier (Max).

 

In Maya you could do it with a blendshape I think. I can't remember how fast it happens and whether the blendshape would be too smooth a transition from deflated to inflated, but I think it would be fine.