Whales
Bill,
Thanks, I'm glad you like them. I played around with projected
light patterns a bit and, in the still, the caustic pattern just
didn't agree with the whale's skin much. I'm sure it will work much
better in the animation with an animated map, but I'll probably save
it for yet another underwater scene I'm doing, a prehistoric reef.
I've got digimation's bubbles, and am using it to have the
whale exhale, should look pretty cool. I'll be picking up the flock
routine when I get to the reef scene to do schooling fish. What's
your opinion on it? How much control do you have over the movement of
the objects and is there a complexity limit on the mesh used as the
master particle? I know it should be kept as simple as possible, but
I always like to have a choice.
The 'unroll' ipas sounds neat, but it could be real tricky.
Once you open and flatten out a mesh, how would it's details be made
readable? Of course if its just unrolled and not flattened out, You
could just render the mesh from the top and use that as a guide
(actually, I guess if its not flattened, which it shouldn't be, the
mesh detail might be enough). Ohh, and it could unravel the mesh
according to previously assigned map coordinates, and the bitmap it
puts out could have its borders match those of the coords perfectly,
so if your coords are half the size of the model, then the bitmap
would show only that portion of the mesh where the coords where
assigned.
I'm liking this idea more and more.
Thanks,
David