A lot of Blender's functions seem to be dependent on the presence of "Empty's". Maybe this is one of them :)

Laurie

Yeah, that's what I gather too.  Seems you need another object or empty in the scene to define the axis or origin of the deformation.  That's somewhat counterintuitive, when it should be quite simple to just include an "axis option" in the modifier itself, as most other software have, for this type of thing.  Wonder why it requires a null definition from the scene?  Definitely makes "simple" deformations a lot more complex.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.