Pin Displacement Test

[Da_elf]

yeah. thats the plugin i meant

[s7en]

There is another approach to creating a pinscreen. One method I've used in the past is to create a plane object with a reasonable density, then apply a displace modifier with the image/animation you wish to embed in the pins. Then create a single pin - a capsule or chamfered cylinder object is good for this.

The bit that makes it all come together is to use a scatter compound object to place a pin at every vertex point on the displaced plane. Make sure you leave the perpendicular option unchecked.

You can easily change the number of pins by adjusting the length and width segments of the Plane object. And control the height of the pins by the Strength setting of the Displace modifier (now buried in your modifier stack)

And don't forget to hide the plane object.

And if you combine it with Peter Watje's Object Texture plugin you can effectively displace the pinscreen using other objects in your scene.

And like Richard's technique, you don't have to worry about your pin's being distorted as its only their position thats being displaced.

[DP]

if your building geometry could you not use a z depth channel and use the luminosity from that?

[DaForce]

Hahahahaha that is so damn cool!!!

Any chance of releaseing the plugin? or is it just for testing. THe reason i ask is that all the other pin plugins i find are for max5...and since im using 6..im a bit of a pickle

[dieciduej]

Hello Richard,

Would it be possible for you to post a small demo file of your pin displacement. I have setup a spline array but I am not sure on how I get a displacement? Do I attach them all together and use a VRay Displace Mod. I have tried several things with no luck.

Any help would be appreciated.

JoeD

[richard_rosenman]

Here's the procedure.

1. Make a spline in your front or right viewport. Two verts is enough. Make the spline vertical.

2. Make a Displace space warp and place it underneith the spline. The default values are fine.

3. In your material editor, create a cellular map, play around with the settings and then instance it into the "Map" slot of the displace space warp.

4. Bind your spline to the space warp.

5. Increase the Displace space warp strength and watch the spline raise and lower. Also, if you move the space warp, watch the spline adjust as it raises up and down over the brighter areas of the cellular map.

That's it.

-Richard

[Da_elf]

or you can download the script which does it all for you hehehe

[DaForce]

Awesome, thanks for the mini tut

would it be possible to only make the top vertex of the spline move? so that the bottom stays in place.

Just a little test render
www.apex.net.au/~daforce/pins.avi

No splines, just boxes, and using an animated noise map for the displacement.

[UBIKmh]

You could bypass the bottom problem by pushing far into you base object.
You'll loose the edge line though. Otherwise you should try to figur out how to do the displacement on a subobject level. If the z displacement is on an attached face or point level, it could stretch the side faces to the appropriate length.
But I think that's going to be a bit more complicated then sticking and animation in a displacement slot.

Marc