Animating and snaps help.. Making a paper crane

AfroLeft

Im trying animate folding paper (in max) but when I have auto key on I can only use the centre of selection's pivot not edge, vertex etc. snaps.. I thought this project would be easy but so many things about it are doing my head in!

Anyone know why it won't let me or know of a work around?
Cheers!

MoP

There's a button just to the right of the drop-down menu where you select the gizmo coordinate system at the top of the screen (to the right of the move/rotate/scale icons) ... if you're not sure which one I'm talking about, hover over them until the tooltip pops up some info with the word "Pivot" in ... then click and hold on that icon, it should drop down to give 3 different icon options - try each of those, see if they do what you want?

AfroLeft

Yeah, but then that button goes grey when I turn on auto key, and the edges/verts etc. no longer get highlighted when I hover the mouse over them. no matter where I click it will use the centre..

MoP

Oh, wait, you're animating at the vertex level?
If you're just animating paper folding, why don't you just do a couple of bones and skin them to the mesh, then animate the bones? Shouldn't take long. Unless I guess it's not just a standard "down the centre" fold ... sounds like you might wanna use animated modifiers instead of hand-animating the vertices and edges?

AfroLeft

Yeah, sorry, at the vertex level.
I'm hoping to make a origami crane, so once several folds are made, I will have to make folds on top of those. So I've chamfered the edges that will be folded (otherwise the pages will occupy the exact same space once folded) Creating a bigger chamfer when the paper is at 2x thickness and so on. I was hoping to get away with just rotating at the edges, then cutting some new edges where the next folds will go (creating new edges as I follow the origami instructions). If I use bones I dont really know where they should go when in its flat state. I guess I could do a fold then refine the bones, but I might end up pulling my hair out if I do that..

MoP

Heh, I see your predicament - that sounds like a pretty scary project ... have you thought about using the Morpher modifier? You could probably do it some way with that...

AfroLeft

The more I think about it the more I realise I should just leave it alone and pretend I never had the idea.. I started working on it last night and I still just have a plane with a few visible edges in it. :O
I thought about morphing but if I do will the paper stay rigid? Maybe I'll have to because the part where you pull the wings up part of the paper bends to get it into shape....
Having a 'veteran polycounter' tell me it sounds like a scary project is pretty offputting too :P
I'll give morphing and some other ideas a go, if I dont have any progress in an hour I'll have to put it aside...

MoP

Heh, just because that title says "veteran polycounter" doesn't mean I know a whole lot about animation!

Maybe someone else will have a better suggestion, but I'm all out!

Good luck!

AfroLeft

Yeah, cheers for the quick reply too...
I tried to morph and it took the direct route from the flat to folded state (physically impossible). So maybe I need a halfway fold state to morph to first. But then when it comes to make the new edges to fold along I will have changed the structure of the mesh and so can't morph it with the previous step. hahahahaaaarrrgghhh!
Or maybe cut the paper up into seperate objects, but that wont look too realistic when I render.

Eric Chadwick

Here's how I've heard others do it... Fold a piece of paper into the origami charactger. Unfold it and use the creases as a guide to subdivide the flat 3ds Max geometry. Make suitable chamfers for the "folds." Create a bone skeleton with the bones located at the creases, and Skin it.

A lot of people have done this wth Max, and have shared their techniques. Head over to the Autodesk forum and do a search.
http://support.discreet.com/webboard/wbpx.dll/~3dsmax
If nothing pops up (history is scrubbed quickly there) then post a new question, with Origami in the title. I'm sure you'll get hits.

AfroLeft

Awesome! I was thinking about doing it that way. But I wasnt too sure once I unfolded it what creases were 1st, 2nd or 3rd etc. folds (so wouldnt know how thick the chamfers should be) I guess if I folded and unfolded the live crane as I went could figure that out. I was searching google for a printable layout so I could use that as the viewport BG but no luck.. I'm sure thers some out there though..
Cheers!

Illusions

Or perhaps you could use the EPoly modifier and its animation attribute...

gonna go give it a quick test...

Yep: It works, setup your model ahead of time like you have, goto your first frame, turn on Autokey, apply the Epoly modifier, and set it to animate, then just use transforms to move either vertices, edges, faces etc. to where you want them. Remember to move the time slider to a new frame for each transformation, like you would with regular animation.