CompuServe Thread

i know of two ways: A: 1)-you position the camera with a very wide angle lens in place of the refracting object with the same movement. render the animation from this cameras point of view. 2)-then replace the opject with the camera and map the object with the animation you rendered in step one. this will creat the effect. B: render the only background of the object. use this image on a projector light and exclude everything but the object from the light. position the light so that it projects the image on the object. work with the scale of the background image to get the proper effect. i hope this helps. ara (yost group: sorry for jumping in)

Michael, Hi there. Glad you liked the magnifying glass effect. I'm the one who did that animation and I'll share the technique I used. It's actually pretty simple to do. First of all create your "lens" and assign it a 100% auto reflective material. Make your piece of "paper" and assign a map to it (in this case it was a pic of a house I did). Basically, you now have the magnifying glass sitting over your piece of paper. The trick is to make a copy of the paper and place it _above_ the magnifying glass. Don't forget to flip it over so your maps are aligned correctly. Flip the surface normals of your top piece of paper so at render time you won't see it. What happens is the magnifying glass will reflect the top piece and make it look like it's magnifying the bottom one. The top piece needs to be closer to the lens than the bottom one so it appears to be actually magnifying the image. I hope this is a fairly clear explanation. Good luck with it. BTW – It's Realm Professional Services not Production Services. If you need any more help on this I'd be happy to help you out. Dave Mennenoh