Straighten a bend?

Hi!

I’m trying to animate an object wich will have 2 poses. I modeled the mesh when it’s already bent.
However, I want to be able to see it go from straight to bent and vice versa.

In this example I just made a shape key and edited my mesh to what I wanted. But as you can see, my mesh gets deformed in the middle of the “animation”. It’s very noticeable on the hole.

How can I make it look like the 2 “poses” without it deforming. Just bending?

Attachments




Can we see the weight paint view and the armature please?

I didn’t do it with an armature. Only made a shape key and animated the influence of it!

Shape key sends the verts from one point to another in a straight line.
Setting the mid pose as the basis and then 2 shape keys. going from start to mid and them from mid to finish. (Not perfect but better.)
Maybe you can use the animall adon.
You can rig it with armatures just make sure the bones are subdivided to where bending is not from one point/have a extra bone. You can add segments to this bone in the deform options. The bone where the hole is needs to control the complete area where the hole is. Just adjust in edit mode to where you get 100% influence on the end with the hole and the bone closer to the base is far enough to where its influence does not reach the hole. then auto weights should work.
Thats my 2 cents

If you don’t want to use an Armature for this… I would use a Lattice…

Kinda like this…

You will need a lot of verts in the lattice or it will also bend and reshape the hole.