Using The Skin Modifier

In This Tutorial, I will teach you how to use the skin modifier to bend and animate objects.

Okay, lets start off by creating a cylinder with these settings:

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Make sure it has alot of height segments, for a clean bend.

Okay, now create another cylinder, with a radius of 25.0, and a height of 45.And move it so it is centered at the bottom of the bigger cylinder, exactly in the middle. Try right clicking on the "select and move" icon and change all settings to 0.0. You should end up with this:

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Now duplicate that cylinder 3 times (hold shift and click on it and change the number of copies to 3), move one of the copies up to the very top of the cylinder, exactly, and spread the other two evenly in between the one the top + the bottom ( there will be a gap between all four small cylinders )

These smaller cylinders will be used as the bones to morph the bigger cylinder:

Ok, time to add the skin modifier, click on the outer cylinder (the big one), and add the modifier to it.

Then, under the Parameters rollout, click on "Add Bone" and then in the selection window, click on the "All" button, then click select:

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Doing this, adds the four smaller cylinders to be the controllable bones, which you can use to manipulate the bigger cylinder... By moving one of the smaller cylinders, you morph part of the bigger cylinder, by rotating one of the smaller cylinders you rotate sections of the bigger cylinder. To simulate how the
bones should move, you will need to add actual "bones" to them. Which i cover in my Animating With Bones The Easy Way Tutorial.

Hint: before rendering, especially for animations, hide the smaller type cylinders by either selecting the smaller cylinders and right clicking and selecting the "Hide selection" option, or by doing it the proper way, which i follow in another of my tutorials:

Hiding Objects During Animation

I hope this tutorial has helped you understand how to simply use the skin modifier. Thank you

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