Lattice Deform

Unik Studio in Presets

BLENDER 4.5+ EXTENSION

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. Your mesh is untouched until you choose to bake, and removing a cage leaves the mesh exactly as it was.

Installation Quick Start Deformers Animation Limitations

Requirements

  • ✓Blender: 4.5 or newer.
  • ✓Deformable object types: mesh, curve, surface and text.
  • ✓Local execution only: LatticeDeform does not use online services and requests no file or network permissions.

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 the LatticeDeform zip file.
  6. Enable LatticeDeform.

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

All controls live in the 3D Viewport sidebar: press N and open the LatticeDeform tab.

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. Open the Deformers sub-panel, choose a deformer, and click Add Deformer.
  6. Drag the deformer's value slider to taste.
  7. Use Bake This Lattice when you want final geometry, or Remove to delete the cage and leave the mesh untouched.

Creating A Cage

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

Fit to Selection (Object Mode)

The cage's world extent matches the selection's bounding box exactly, at every resolution — including asymmetric grids such as 2×5×8.

  • ▸Source: Selected — the current object selection.
  • ▸Source: Collection — every deformable object in a chosen collection. The cage remembers the collection, so running it again updates that cage instead of creating a second one. Create New forces an additional cage.
  • ▸Orientation: World — an axis-aligned box.
  • ▸Orientation: Active — the cage inherits the active object's rotation and hugs it tightly. Use this for objects that are not axis-aligned.
  • ▸Padding — 1.0 fits exactly. 1.2 leaves 20% breathing room, which softens the deformation near the surface.

Library-linked objects are read-only and cannot take modifiers. LatticeDeform skips them and tells you so — make a library override, or use Realize & Fit on their instancer.

Fit to Selection (Edit Mesh)

While editing a mesh, a Fit to Selection panel appears. It fits a cage to the selected vertices only and creates a matching vertex group, so the deformation stays inside that selection and the rest of the mesh does not move. Selecting the whole mesh skips the group.

The operator returns you to Object Mode. This is required: a modifier bound while the mesh is still in Edit Mode never reaches the evaluated result.

Resolution

Resolution U / V / W accepts 2–64 per axis. The sliders are live — changing them rebuilds the cage in place, preserving the fit, the deformer stack and any hand-sculpted shape keys.

Resolution is locked while in Edit Mode. Finish editing to change it.

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.

DEFORMER EFFECT
Squash & Stretch Volume-preserving scale along the length axis
Bulge Widens the middle
Pinch Narrows the middle
Bend Curves the object around an arc
Taper Linear width falloff
Twist Rotation around the length axis
Bloat Uniform inflate toward a sphere
S-Curve Double bend through the object
Wave A single lateral hump
Shear Linear slant
Flare Widens toward both ends, vase-like
Noise Deterministic random per-point offset
Shear 2-Axis Slant on both cross axes at once
Spiral Twist that tapers along the axis

Length Axis

Auto picks the cage's longest axis, or force X, Y or Z. Disabled for Bloat and Noise, which act on all axes.

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.

Anchor

Center deforms symmetrically around the middle. Base plants the bottom so the deformation grows upward, like a swaying tree. Top plants the top.

Editing a deformer after adding it

Changing Length Axis, Direction or Anchor rebuilds the active deformer in place. Its value, keyframes and drivers survive. The choice is stored per deformer, so it also survives saving, reloading and resolution changes.

Deformers that need more control points raise the resolution automatically and warn you. Bulge, Pinch, Wave and Flare need an odd count along the axis to read correctly.

Per-deformer controls: a value slider, Edit to jump into Edit Mode with that key active, and Remove. Move Up and Move Down reorder the lattice's modifier in the bound objects' modifier stacks.

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

Hide Cage takes the lattice out of the viewport while the deformation keeps running, so you can judge the result without the wireframe in the way. Hiding hands the selection to a bound object, so the panel and the Show Cage button stay reachable, and it clears the outliner's monitor-icon disable so a cage can always be brought back.

This is separate from Deform On / Off in Advanced, which mutes the modifier itself.

Opacity fades the cage instead of hiding it. Blender has no alpha on the lattice wire theme colour, so this drives the object's own RGBA colour — visible with Object viewport shading — and the add-on's own point overlay in Edit Mode.

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.
  • ▸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.

With more than one pose key, Preview All Poses cross-fades through them in order.

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.
  • ▸Fitting from an Edit-Mesh vertex selection creates that group for you.

Managing Cages

ACTION WHAT IT DOES
Live Auto-Fit The cage follows its objects as they move, rotate or scale
Deform On / Off Toggles the modifier on every bound object
Bind Selected Binds more objects to the active cage
Stack Another Lattice Adds a second cage fitted to the currently deformed shape, appended after the first
Duplicate Lattice Copies the cage and its deformers, stripping the collection tag and auto-fit flags
Select Bound Objects Selects everything the cage deforms
Refit to Objects Re-fits an existing cage after its objects changed size
Realize & Fit Converts instancers to real objects, then fits
Lattices in Scene A jump list, shown when more than one cage exists

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.
  • ▸Remove deletes the cage and its modifiers, leaving the mesh exactly as it was — 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.

Stop scaling lattices by hand.

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

LatticeDeform — Made for Blender

  • For test. Fits a lattice to the selected objects, plus point size and colour. No deformers or animation.

    $2

  • 14 deformers, Sculpt Grab, mirror editing, pose animation.

    $25
$2

Support Period Included

Includes 12 months of

Extend this product’s Support Period +12 months: 25% of product price

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Details
Blender Extension Compatible Yes
Sales 40+
Rating
4 ratings
Published 2 months ago
Blender Version 4.5 - 5.2
Extension Type Add-on
Render Engine Used Cycles, Eevee
License GPL

Unik Studio

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