Animating a separation

tremulant

I want to create the effect sometimes seen in 3d diagrams. Example: A camera that looks normal and then it suddenly breaks apart cleanly in either horizontal or vertical directions and stops at a point to show all the pieces contained within the camera including the outside shell.

It would be a kind of Assembly/disassembly I guess.

Today I messed with particle flow to achieve the effect, but it lacks the control I need over the pieces...I was trying to think of a way I could just select all the objects and move them along their local axis.

Anyway, as long as it achieves the effect and I can keep the materials applied I would be so grateful for any ideas you dudes/dudettes have.

cryrid

Is this for a real-time effect, or something you can render and composite?

The easiest way is to model the object in pieces (like in reality), and just move the meshes away from each other. At least that's how the camera-disassembly example works in my mind. If you're looking to cut into a single piece, a simple animated boolean can go a long way.

Mark Dygert

cryrid wrote: »

If you're looking to cut into a single piece, a simple animated boolean can go a long way.

You can animate the near clipping plane on a camera to reveal the inner workings.
http://docs.autodesk.com/MAXDES/13/ENU/Autodesk%203ds%20Max%20Design%202011%20Help/index.html?url=./files/WSf742dab041063133-18033351112a1ce86c6-7fa0.htm,topicNumber=d0e484658

cryrid

Can that be limited to certain objects (allowing you to peel back the outer shell without clipping whatever is inside)

Mark Dygert

I don't think you can. But you could render it in passes and composite it, but I think he's looking to animate/explode geometry to reveal the inner workings?

With a boolean or proboolean you'll have to join all the pieces you want to operate on into one mesh object, or have many copies of the cutting object and many seperate booleans?

To explode I would:
- Create a non-rendeable mesh that encompasses and intersects with all the pieces.
- Select all the pieces you want to move then run Paul Hormis "Attach Selection to Surface" script pointing it at the non-renderable mesh.
- Then animate the scale of the non-renderable mesh to have the pieces explode away from the object.

cryrid

I wasn't sure if he wanted an explode-type effect, or a cross section. For the explode I was thinking modeling everything separate (screws, bolts, etc) and just having things translate apart.

For cross-sections, I was thinking booleans would easily offer a lot of control

• choosing what gets clipped; peel back part of an individual object or multiple objects at the same time using a singe invisible cutting object
• control the shape of the chunk that gets cut away
• animate the 'peel'

tremulant

First off thank you guys so much for replying quickly! Polycount is great because of awesome guys like you.

This is for a rendered piece (sorry forgot to mention that) and it will, indeed, be revealing the parts of the inside of my object. So I ended up using this solution that Vig pointed to involving the Script from Paul Hormis. What an awesome set of scripts!! Vig, you are a life saver. This was exactly what I needed. Thank you and cyrid so much for your help.

Dave

I'll try and post my results later(if I ever get a break!)