Lattice DeformDocumentation

LatticeDeform removes the tedious part of lattice deformation. One click builds a lattice that exactly frames your selection and binds it, then you shape it with fourteen procedural deformers, a sculpt brush, or by hand.

Everything stays non-destructive. Stack multiple lattices on the same source—even directly on top of one another—and use the always-visible Lattices manager to choose exactly which cage you are editing. Your mesh is untouched until you choose to bake.

Requirements

• ✓Blender: 4.5 or newer.
• ✓Deformable object types: mesh, curve, surface and text.
• ✓Local execution only: LatticeDeform does not use online services or network access. Its file permission is used only for a small viewport-theme recovery backup in Blender's config folder.

Installation

1. Download the LatticeDeform zip package from Superhive.
2. Open Blender.
3. Go to Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions.
4. Choose Install from Disk.
5. Select lattice_deform-1.0.1.zip.
6. Enable LatticeDeform.

You can also drag and drop the extension zip onto the Blender window.

Quick Start

1. Select one or more objects in the viewport.
2. Open the LatticeDeform sidebar tab.
3. Set Resolution U / V / W — 2×2×2 for broad shaping, higher for detail.
4. Click Create Lattice.
5. To stack another cage on the same source, select the source again and click Add Lattice. Overlapping cages are supported.
6. Choose any cage by name in the Lattices manager, the viewport, or the Outliner. The active cage is outlined in orange and the sidebar switches to that cage's own settings.
7. Open the Deformers sub-panel, choose a deformer, and click Add Deformer.
8. Drag the deformer's value slider to taste.
9. Use Bake This Lattice when you want final geometry, or the manager trash button to remove only that cage while leaving other cages intact.

Creating A Cage

From an object selection, a collection, or a handful of vertices.

Deformers

Fourteen procedural shapes, stacked as shape keys.

Each deformer is written into its own shape key on the lattice, so they stack and blend like modifier layers and every one is keyframeable. Sliders run from −2 to 2; negative values invert the effect.

Direction

Which way a Bend, Wave, Shear or S-Curve travels.

A length axis leaves two cross axes free, and the deformer only uses one of them. Without this control a Z-length bend could only curve one way. Choose the other axis to bend the opposite way — for example, wrapping a flat label around a bottle.

Auto keeps the deformer's own default. The dropdown only appears for those four deformers; the rest act on both cross axes and ignore it. Choosing the same axis as Length Axis is meaningless, so it falls back to automatic and says so.

Editing The Cage By Hand

Point selection, mirroring, and a falloff brush.

Edit Lattice enters Edit Mode with a display built for lattice work: custom point size and colours, hover highlight, and a clickable gizmo on every control point. The viewport theme is modified while editing and fully restored on exit — including after a crash, via a backup file in the Blender config folder.

• ▸Select Points — All, Top, Middle, Bottom, None, with a selectable Slice Axis.
• ▸Mirror Selection X / Y / Z — selecting a point also selects its reflection about the local origin, and moving one moves the partner symmetrically. Points sitting on a mirror plane select alone. With all three axes on, one corner pulls all eight.
• ▸Tab toggles Edit Lattice from the viewport.
• ▸Ctrl+Z inside the cage undoes the last point edit without leaving Edit Mode.
• ▸Reset Lattice flattens the cage back to its rest grid while keeping the binding.

Sculpt Grab

A modal brush that drags lattice points with a falloff.

• ▸Drag with the left mouse button to pull points. The radius circle is drawn under the cursor.
• ▸Mouse wheel resizes the brush. Shift + wheel changes strength. F grows it.
• ▸Enter or Tab finishes. Esc or right mouse cancels and restores the pre-sculpt state.
• ▸Middle mouse and numpad views pass through, so you can orbit while sculpting.
• ▸Clicks outside the viewport also pass through, so the sidebar's Exit Sculpt button stays usable.

Cage Visibility

Each manager row has an eye button for cage visibility and a modifier button for deformation. Hiding a cage leaves its deformation running; disabling deformation leaves the cage available for management.

The active managed cage is outlined in orange—even when cages overlap—and the outline follows evaluated Shape Key and animation deformation.

Cage Opacity fades only the selected cage instead of hiding it.

Poses And Animation

Add New Animation creates a numbered pose key to sculpt into. Each pose gets its own button, and the active one is highlighted. Poses can be masked to a vertex group on the lattice itself.

• ▸Preview Active drives the selected key's value from a live sine driver — no keyframes, instant feedback in the viewport.
• ▸Pose Strength sets how far the pose is reached; 1.0 hits the exact pose.
• ▸Speed sets the cycle rate, shown as a period in frames.
• ▸Stop Preview removes the drivers.
• ▸Bake to Keyframes converts the live driver into real F-curves across the scene frame range, ready for export.

Preview Active always affects only the selected Shape Key, so switching cages or poses stays predictable.

Influence And Masking

• ▸Influence (0–1) scales the Lattice modifier's strength on every bound object at once. 0.5 gives exactly half the displacement.
• ▸Mesh Deform Mask picks a vertex group on a bound mesh so only those vertices deform.
• ▸Pose Point Mask picks a group on the lattice itself to limit only the active Shape Key. Influence and both masks are stored per cage.
• ▸Fitting from an Edit-Mesh vertex selection creates that group for you.

Managing Cages

Finishing

• ▸Bake This Lattice applies the modifier into the mesh and keeps the cage.
• ▸Bake All Lattices bakes every LatticeDeform cage in the scene and deletes the spent ones. This affects all cages in the file, not only the selected one.
• ▸Reset Lattice clears deformers, keyframes and drivers, and puts the points back on the rest grid. The binding is kept.
• ▸The manager Trash button deletes only the active cage and its modifiers, leaving the mesh and every other cage intact — nothing is baked in.

Also available through F3 operator search: Apply & Remove, which applies the modifier and deletes the cage in one step, and Set Resolution.

Preferences

Add-on preferences, and the Lattice Display box in Edit Mode, control:

• ▸Select Lattice After Fit — whether the new cage becomes the active object.
• ▸Edit Vertex Size (1–32), Vertex Colour, Selected Colour, and the Hover Highlight toggle.

Display settings are remembered between sessions and restored on file load.

Performance Notes

• ✓Lattice deformation cost scales with the bound mesh's vertex count, not the cage resolution. Very dense meshes update more slowly.
• ✓Keep the resolution as low as the shape allows. Most deformers read well at 3×3×3.
• ✓Live Auto-Fit re-fits on every dependency-graph update; turn it off once the layout is settled.
• ✓Bake only when the result is approved.

Known Limitations

• 1Cage volume: Blender's lattice deform only affects geometry inside the cage volume. Geometry outside it is not moved.
• 2B-spline undershoot: B-spline interpolation, Blender's default, deliberately undershoots: a squash of 1.0 reads at roughly 1.8× rather than 2×, converging as resolution rises. Switch the lattice's interpolation to Linear if you need exact figures.
• 3Linked objects: library-linked objects cannot take modifiers. Use a library override or Realize & Fit.
• 4Resolution and shape keys: Blender makes lattice resolution read-only once any shape key exists. LatticeDeform works around this by rebuilding the cage, which is why a resolution change re-applies the deformer stack.
• 5Bake is final: Bake to Mesh ends the live state for that object. Save a version first if you may need to return to it.

Release, License And Support

Changelog

Stop scaling lattices by hand.

Fit, deform, sculpt, animate — and leave your mesh exactly as you found it.