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
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.
or use particle flow, they have options for particles to look at camera, in sprite mode.
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
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
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
Whoaaa great olli, that works perfectly 
thanks all!
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)
This is the one I tend to use:
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.
here is another script for it: Nir Sullam's 3DS MAX Page just scroll down a bit to the billboard generator.
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.
umm, i think i am missing something here, but couldn’t you just set the particle type to facing?
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/multi-assign-scripted-billboard-controller
will check out the other ones posted too, maybe for future projects!
thanks
*i can see cleeearly now, the rain has gone*
yup, i thought i was missing something 
different maps and accurate placement ought to cause some problems, yes - sorry about that…
ah a pity, I thought you knew a way of doing it with particles
Make a plane with it’s pivot at the bottom, birth particles on your ground using position object, assign a material static but put a multi sub object material into it - you have options to randomly assign a material id so if you put all of your materials that you want distributed you get random variation. As for the facing thing, if you apply a shape facing operator first, it’ll set a shape and the rotation. If you put the shape instance with your plane object, it’ll overwrite the shape but not the rotation so you’ll get a shape facing effect but your plane object as the geometry.
ah, nice one joconnel - great tip!
Hey olli96, Any chance you could repost me a link to your look at trees avi as the link seems to be down. Much appreciated