#How do shorten rope 3ds
8 messages in this thread
Help… Can anybody tell me how to shorten a shape like a rope
from one end, following a turning twisting path. Like a fuse burning from one
end consuming the rope as it grows ?. And then the reverse from short to the
full rope again following the same path ?. In Keyframer of course. Anybody
??? Everybody ??? Try and get this one out of the manual I Can't.
Any and all suggestions appericated. J. Perry
Jim,
an animated opacity map would probably do the trick, mapped to a shape lofted
along a twisty path (mapping on, normalize length, length repeat = 1 and
perimeter repeat = 1). Create the path in the 2d shaper with the freehand tool
and edit in the 3d lofter. Create the animated opacity map in animator pro or
even 3ds. It would be a flic of the black screen filling with white from left
to right over x number of frames. If the direction of the opacity is incorrect
then you can rotate the opacity map 90 degrees in the material editor setup
dialog box.
The other method would be morphing which, in 3ds, is almost too hard for me to
even complicate.
Good luck.
I tried Martin's suggestion on a similar type of problem: i.e. a fuse that
burns down with spurt providing the sparkles. Never could get the opacity map
flic method to work out quite right. I think the problem was due to the length
of the fuse (lots of up and down jags) versus the size of the opacity map
(1024×8). The fuse just sort of faded away, both berfore and after the
sparkler.
I ended up creating the fuse on a single (XY) plane and rotated the fuse a tiny
bit around the Z axis. I then used a cube (set as a matte) right behind the
fuse in the Z direction and moved it forward over time in keyframer.
LAM
Hey Larry, are you keeping warm up there?
>>opacity map flic fizzled…
Could you have had the flic moving horizontally instead of vertically? The
length of the object shouldn't matter if the mapping coordinate parameters are
right (repeat=1, etc). I think a longer fuse would just need more frames in
the flic for a given map speed.
The last time I did this, to apply caulking to a joint, I made a flic with
white moving vertically (since the lofted mapping coordinates are applied in
the direction along the path). I made a quick 640*480 flic with a white object
in 3DS, starting at solid black and ending with solid white, bottom to top to
grow the object (white to black to burn a fuse). If the flic direction is
wrong, the map rotation Martin mentioned works great (I just tried it).
Your gobbling matte trick is a good one to remember (if the camera doesn't have
to move), and it would be easier to vary the speed.
JKJ
BWT, if you ever need to make a twisted or braided cord, there are some
diagonal maps on the CD that can make a very convincing cord when applied as
both texture and bump maps. I used one to make a cut-away view of a twisted
electrical cable.
Don't forget than in R3 you can just click on the rotate button in map
parameters. You don't need to re-generate your animated maps to flow in another
direction…
Good reminder. That was exactly what Martin the Master suggested earlier, and
since I'd never used it myself, I tried it last night! Does a great job. (You
can do some wierd things by varying the angle by odd amounts.)
Now what I want is a way to manually edit the existing mapping coordinates of
any object on the vertex level. (There is an way to edit mapping coordinates
somewhat thru morphing if anyone is interested…)
JKJ
Larry…. Thanks for the new tip re the burning fuse. Yes I have the
same problem and due to a couple of switch backs. I over came it by doing 3
different flics and marrying the segments I wanted. Just a work around but…
you know anything to get the damn project finished.
Regards….. and happy ney year to you and yours.
J. Perry [JMA Inc.]