3dsmax - keep animation of collapsing stack

newto3d

Hi Guys,

So I'm currently creating a book which i want to take into UDK. I want there to be a main anim of opening the book and then a couple seperate pages that can turn.

So where im at and stuck with is after i've created the main binder and bones, this open and closes fine and works in udk.

but when i create the pages, which i create by using a spline then extruding. i animate it by changing the curve of the spline, so looks better when pages are open and back to sort of a block of pages when book close.

then issue comes when i import into udk, the page sections just show the line. if i collapse the stack for the line so its extruded it loses the animation.

What can i do to animate this, or to collapse the pages and keep the anim?

Thanks,

C

Memory

Generally speaking, and my UDK bros can back me up on this, but game engines tend to not read things like "changing the curve of the spline."

You'll either want to add bones to your pages and animate the bones--or do some kind of vertex morphing (if UDK supports it.) Any way you proceed, that stack will most likely need to collapse my friend.

Lets turn the page on this question!

newto3d

so i got rid of the spline and created a box and manualy edited the verts to do the page curl below pic.



so that anime works in udk for the binder bit, but not the page bit doesnt move, the verts are weighted to bone 1.



below is just the basic 3 bone setup i have, for this to work do i need additonal bones as in below pic.



fairly new to udk and new to animation, so sorry if these seem silly questions

JonMurphy

Sounds like what you will need to do is set up morph targets on the pages, which could then be bound to the angle of the bones to get that pages fanning out as the book opens effect.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MorphTargets.html

newto3d

Thanks, will check morph targets out, not used them before will be interesting to have a go

Mark Dygert

I haven't tried them out with UDK but the skin modifier under the gizmo section has "Joint Angle Deformers" and "Morph Angle Deformers", which are morph targets that are driven off of the angles of the bones. It's a little more automated than trying to rig up your own morph targets to bone angles so if they are supported that would be awesome and a very easy way to pull it off. If it doesn't you're probably stuck hoping that wireparameters carry over or you have to set something up inside of UDK... that could get pretty messy.

So see if UDK supports the "Joint angle deformer" or "morph angle deformer".