make planes face the camera

[flipside]

Hi,

is there an easy way to make a lot of planes face towards the camera at all times? I want to make some planes with humans in silhouette style mapped onto them. But the should always face towards the camera.

I tried with lookat, but then they rotate in x and y axis too, and they sometimes flip over when I change the view. Also I need the planes to face the active camera, and I have more than one in the scene.

Thanks,

wouter

[Dynedain]

You could probably use lookat, and wire the rotation controller of each object to a dummy, but only for the Z rotation track.

Then place the dummy where you want the object to face, you could even align and parent the dummy to the camera position.

[Morbid Angel]

or use particle flow, they have options for particles to look at camera, in sprite mode.

[flipside]

Dynedain, I try that, but to what parameter of the dummy should I wire the rotation of the plane? I can't get it to work (cause I'm new to this kind of stuff). I should be able to say that X and Y rotation are fixed, and not used for the lookat constraint.

Morbid, what is sprite mode? Max help doesn't mention it, and if I google I only find lightwave links... Indeed pflow has this options, but I need different people mapped onto each plane, plus full manual control of where the planes are placed.

thanks!

wouter

[instinct]

Check scriptspot. There is a script that is actually intended to create ppl planes that are facing the camera in one axis only if i recall right.

Thorsten

[Olli96]

If you want to do it by hand then take a look at this small video i just made: http://www.olli96.net/data/look_at_trees.avi

Olli

[flipside]

Whoaaa great olli, that works perfectly

thanks all!

[flino2004]

I think there is a way to create your own RPC using of course the RPC plug-in

http://www.3dpopulate.com/ these guys made their 2d people exactly that you want to do (with RPC)

[cgrant3d]

Check scriptspot. There is a script that is actually intended to create ppl planes that are facing the camera in one axis only if i recall right.

Thorsten

This is the one I tend to use:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/mu...ard-controller

[flipside]

That script works better than the one I found.

How do you use it in combination with multiple camera's in one scene? Cause switching the target to another cam doesn't work, you have to select the planes too and assign them again. When rendering multiple views from the same scene, I bet I will forget to switch any of these things, so I will end up with a high res render with people facing the wrong camera

[Dynedain]

That script works better than the one I found.

How do you use it in combination with multiple camera's in one scene? Cause switching the target to another cam doesn't work, you have to select the planes too and assign them again. When rendering multiple views from the same scene, I bet I will forget to switch any of these things, so I will end up with a high res render with people facing the wrong camera

Well, if you can get them to look at a dummy instead of at a camera, then you only have to switch which camera the dummy is parented/aligned to, rather than remembering to switch all the objects.

[Olli96]

here is another script for it: http://www.orvatsel.com/max/ just scroll down a bit to the billboard generator.

[plastic_]

http://plugins.angstraum.at/treeshop/manual.htm

this script can set all billboards to face the current render-view, regardless of the camera, or a camera can be picked from the interface.

[kimgar]

umm, i think i am missing something here, but couldn't you just set the particle type to facing?

[flipside]

How do you get different maps on each particle, and how do you make sure the particles only face in the z-axis (people shopuldn't lean over), and how do you place each particle accuratly (in x, y, and z axis, so that they are placed where you want and don't float or intersect the ground)?

I used this one: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/mu...ard-controller

will check out the other ones posted too, maybe for future projects!

thanks