making planes face camera in 3dsmax

DoomiVox

I'm starting to model plantlife in some environments I've created and instead of placing sheets through eachother for creating the canopy of the trees I think I want to model sheets that always turn to face the camera (as to never reveal themselves as flat sheets).

I know it's possible but the problem is I'm not sure how to go about this in 3dsmax.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

DoomiVox

PeterK

use a "look-at" constraint on the plane's rotation, and set it to the camera. It's under the motion tab, that's the one with the wheel on it

DoomiVox

wow...i can't believe it's that simple...and that i couldn't think to do that on my own.
many thanks!

Mark Dygert

If you wanted to get funky, you could use a Super Sprayer to spread the plants around.

Set the Particle type to Instanced Geometry (pick your plant mesh as the instance) and set the "standard particles to "Facing". They'll face whatever the active viewport is. Probably put some gravity in there and a ground plane to catch them.

Probably more fun to play around with than actually practical.