This tutorial uses deform lattices to animate a fish swimming by the camera. You could use this technique for other animations like a space ship going into warp space and so on.

I had a model of a fish lying around so I thought I would see how effective this would work on it. First off I applied a 3x3x3 lattice to the fish. You do this by selecting the lattice tool and click on the fish. That's it.

The next step is to move the fish ahead of the mesh you applied to it. Then apply another one. Keep doing this until you have a whole line of them like this.

Now we need to deform all the lattices. Select the first one and the choose the "reshape" tool.

Next, move the center points (from the top view) over to the right just a bit. You will need to do this to all of the lattices.

This is what you should have after they are all deformed.

Okay, now lets move the fish through the chain of deformed lattices. Move your time marker down the time line a little and then drag the fish through the lattices.

That's it! The lattices push and pull the geometry of the fish as it passes through them. I dropped in a camera and some lighting and made this little animation so you could see what it looks like. It could use some more tweaking but you get the idea.

Animation to come very soon. I need to compress it!