i hope some Max guru can help... happy to pay for a custom script if it works.
ive got a job where client has a specific treatment for graphical wireframe objects in a series of animations. . they all feature a screen-mapped gradient of 2 specific colours, going from top left to bottom right. these are applied to "key" objects in each scene. this was easy and has been fine until now.
client has come back 6 months later and requested that the gradient be "fitted" to each key object, so the top left and bottom right "brand" colours correspond to the top left and bottom right of the object in question, rather than the whole screen.
given the objects change silhouette constantly due to animation of geometry or camera movements, this is, frankly, ridiculous, but you can see them glazing over when i try to explain. not interested, we want it like this.
so, anyone got a decent way to, at least, keep a uv gizmo parallel to camera plane, and aligned top to bottom of screen? that way at least i can fit the gizmo to the object at its widest point in shot, and keep it pointing the right way during camera orbits? ive looked online, but none of the suggestions appear to actually work reliably. (fiddly ways to apply lookat constraint dont give same effect as screen-mapping, the gizmo rotates as it moves away from centre of view)
i considered making a custom screen map texture per-shot, with the gradient fitted to the object at its largest on screen. .. but this falls apart as an idea if the object moves about on the screen... i cant be rendering animated texture sequences which track a moving object for each shot, there are dozens of shots to do.
alternatively, some clever method i didnt consider? an osl or vray shader, some procedural trick, a plugin?
cheers all..
ive got a job where client has a specific treatment for graphical wireframe objects in a series of animations. . they all feature a screen-mapped gradient of 2 specific colours, going from top left to bottom right. these are applied to "key" objects in each scene. this was easy and has been fine until now.
client has come back 6 months later and requested that the gradient be "fitted" to each key object, so the top left and bottom right "brand" colours correspond to the top left and bottom right of the object in question, rather than the whole screen.
given the objects change silhouette constantly due to animation of geometry or camera movements, this is, frankly, ridiculous, but you can see them glazing over when i try to explain. not interested, we want it like this.
so, anyone got a decent way to, at least, keep a uv gizmo parallel to camera plane, and aligned top to bottom of screen? that way at least i can fit the gizmo to the object at its widest point in shot, and keep it pointing the right way during camera orbits? ive looked online, but none of the suggestions appear to actually work reliably. (fiddly ways to apply lookat constraint dont give same effect as screen-mapping, the gizmo rotates as it moves away from centre of view)
i considered making a custom screen map texture per-shot, with the gradient fitted to the object at its largest on screen. .. but this falls apart as an idea if the object moves about on the screen... i cant be rendering animated texture sequences which track a moving object for each shot, there are dozens of shots to do.
alternatively, some clever method i didnt consider? an osl or vray shader, some procedural trick, a plugin?
cheers all..
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