About Using Deformations as Controllers
Sometimes, several drawing in a rig need to be constrained to a specific shape, such as the links in a chain, or books in a tall, wobbly pile. Such rigs require all their individual parts to follow a single curve, and animating each part of these rigs individually can be very tedious.
With the Point Kinematic Node, you can automatically constrain several drawings to a curve or envelope, without having to animate each drawing individually. Even if you don’t have a drawing to deform, you can create a deformation chain that is rigged to several Point Kinematic Output nodes, and hence use the deformation chain as an animation controller for all of these drawings.
In the example below, a deformation chain is rigged to four Point Kinematic Output nodes, each of which control a single link in a metal chain. The deformation chain is not deforming any drawing, it’s merely used to control the Point Kinematic Output nodes, which apply regular transformations to the position and angle of each link.