Animating and snaps help.. Making a paper crane
polycounter lvl 18
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!
Anyone know why it won't let me or know of a work around?
Cheers!
Replies
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?
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..
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...
Maybe someone else will have a better suggestion, but I'm all out!
Good luck!
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.
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.
Cheers!
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.