How do I bend a plane and keep the objects on it following its bend?

Question

I want to to place some objects on a plane (for right now I'll keep it simple and say they're cubes). Then I want to bend that plane but keep the cubes connected to the plane, following the curve of the bend. Also I want to keep the cubes separate and not a part of the plane so I can edit them separately. A good example I can think of that represents what I want to do is the game Animal Crossing.

Here's a screenshot of the game.

Is there any way I could go about doing this?

Answer 1

In edit mode subdivide the plane so to have a grid with enough vertices that will define the position of your cube, then select the 3 vertices nearest the position you want the cube to stay.

Then in object mode select the cube, Shift select the plane, press Ctrl+P and choose "vertex triangle", so the cube will always follow the average location of the three vertices of the plane.

Answer 2

You can also use the new Surface Deform modifier in blender 2.79.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/deform/surface_deform.html

1. Select one of the objects you want to follow the plane
2. Go to the modifiers panel and create a Surface Deform modifier
3. Set the surface it's following to the plane.

Now the object should be following the plane. To copy this modifier to the other objects:

1. Select the other objects
2. shift+select the cube that has the modifier on it
3. hit ctrl+l to bring up the "make links" menu
4. choose Modifiers - this will copy the modifier from the cube with the modifier to the other cubes

hope that helps!