ScalpelMAX - fixing the slice plane.

[Adam H. Stewart]

I am working on a problem which I thought I had solved with the slice modifier in max. The problem is I am slicing an object which needs to be animated through the slice plane. I cannot fix the problem in post for logistics reasons. I have a couple of hundred barcharts. The bars have wood grain and the client likes the visual look of the bars being pushed into position, but they also want the end (origins) of the bars to be sliced.
My question is - does ScalpelMAX use slice plane that remains seperate to the sliced object, so it can be linked and animated independently ?

Thanks as always for your help.

[studioDIM]

I am not sure about this, but maybe the editpoly modifier in animate mode might sort it?
Blind guess, hey...

Lele

[Adam H. Stewart]

Thanks

Thanks for the tip, think I have it figured out using UVW map by copying instance keys from the height and then using Xform to correct the mapping offset. I think this will do the trick - it has been a big challenge to wrap my head around but I think it's going to work.

Thanks for your help.

[jonahhawk]

Would animating Boolean operands work? I can't visualize what you are trying to accomplish. Can you post an image or two?

[Adam H. Stewart]

Animating UV's



I am not sure if this graphic makes things easier to understand - the work around using the animated UV modifier with instanced keys to the height for the chambered box seems to be working. The reason the slice modifier wasn't working on it's own is because the entire bar was being animated. The slice plane was moving with the animated bar - but I needed it to stay in the one place. I tried using the position keys in reverse to keep the bar in the same place, but the ease in's and outs where throwing off.

Animating the UV's gives the same appearance as animating the entire bar. Hard to believe that something sooooo boring can be so complicated !!

Thanks a always for your help.

[jonahhawk]

ah I think i see now. the easy way to do this is to simply put a matte in front of the bars. put a plane in front of the bars so that it hides everything to the left of the blue line. Change the V-Ray properties to make it a Matte object. that's it, no modifiers.

--

or you could animate the bars on the subobject level below a slice modifier (not the slice plane). in the stack:

Cap holes <-- Cap holes modifier (why do you need this? will you see the ends?)
Slice <-- set this mod to remove bottom.
Edit Poly <-- Animate the Element subobject here.
UVW Map <-- Map as usual.
Chamfer Box

[glyph]

am I missing something - surely it would be much easier and vastly quicker in aftereffects (or whatever) with animated masking?

[Da_elf]

why not have the UVW above the edit poly modifyer and just animate the edit poly modift\yer? this way the mapping stays the same all the time and the bar can stretch my moving the vertex. oh wait i see what the problem is. hehe. forgive me for saying it. but whats wrong with a boolean?

[Adam H. Stewart]

Animated Camera

The solution I have now is working pretty well. The reason for all the extra hassle is four fold.

1.The client wants to give the impression that that bars are being pushed into place - to the give this impression you need to move something the bars or the UV's - the way I have been doing this is instancing the height keys to the UV's - a bit tweaky as you need to slide the UV's back into place using UV X-form - the reason I use instanced keys is to keep the ability to tweak ease in and ease out keys without having to re-paste things.
2.The camera is animated and they want to see the thickness of the bars at the sliced end ( you don't get this when you use a matt )
3. There are hundreds of these animations with frequent changes. I am quite adept at After Effects but I am not great with file structure. I know from experience adding that extra After Effects step with fading up and down keys can become are real nightmare when you have a tweaky client - who might want changes six months or six years from now. In this case it was very important to do it all in the 3dsmax and have it all rigged to have it easily tweakable, even by another animator.
4.Consistency - all the other animations in the series where done using a matt method that sliced off the end of the bars - so these bars also need to be sliced but because we see the sliced ends they also need the Caps.


Thanks for all your imput and help.

[jonahhawk]

simple...

compressed but clear enough. divx.

http://s99.photobucket.com/albums/l2...=woodgraph.flv