Electricity

[Brinson]

LW experts,

I would like to create an electrical current between to wires. Sort of like lightning but horizontally between to wires.

I hope I am making sense.
Thanks in advance,

JB

[wacom]

I've used two point polygons in layout to do this.

First download the Guid Tool plug-in here:

http://www.hurleyworks.com/

What it will let you do is turn splines into any amount of two point polygons you wish.

Next go into modeler and load the plugin, make a "saw tooth" spline, and then run the plugin on it. It may take you a few times playing with it's settings to get what you want. When you're happy with the results delete the spline leaving only the two point polygon chain. Next, using the Jitter tool make several morphs of the 2 point poly chain.

Send the chain over to layout, select it and hit "p" and uner edges and lines set the line size to large. Now open the Surfaces tab and select the surface for the poly chain object and give it some "glow" under the advance tab. Then enable glow for the scene. Hit F9 and see what you have so far, you may have to adjust the glow amount of the surface and line thickness. Tweak it 'til you get it right where you want it.

Select the poly chain again and hit "p". Go into the deformation tab and in the pulldown select "Morph_Mixer". Click on Morph Mixer and use the slider(s) to animate the electricity. You can then go into the graphe editor from here to help aid your animation of the "electricity". etc etc.

If this doesn't make sense please ask me to clarify and I'll send you some screen shots as well as fill in the gaps.

Hope it helps...maybe someone has a better solution...:)

[Brinson]

Wacom,

Thanks for the feedback. I will try your suggestion and hopefully I can get it to work.

Thanks again,

[adrian]

Or alternatively use AE.

Adrian.

[riki]

I did something like that on this page see 'Two Point Poly Chains'

re http://www.suture.net/tutorials/modeling/page05.shtml

and the vid file

http://www.suture.net/tutorials/modeling/files/zapped.mov

[wacom]

Originally posted by riki
I did something like that on this page see 'Two Point Poly Chains'

re http://www.suture.net/tutorials/modeling/page05.shtml

and the vid file

http://www.suture.net/tutorials/modeling/files/zapped.mov

That is exactly what I'm talking about! But you were able to state it in just a few lines and with a video! Great. Thanks Riki for clearing it up out of my blabber mouth haze.

Tell us if you get it working Brinson...and show us when your done.

[papou]

you can use a subdivide poly too.
so u can texture it with gradient & procedurals (color white to blue, and luminosity)...beter than glow on a line poly...
I use procedural texture in displacement for animation....
U can use bones and weightmap to move it...
i get really good result like that...

There are a lot of free third party plugins from Fi's here:
Curve2line and XYdrift....
http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~fis_junk/

hope it help.

[wacom]

Here is an "cheap" example I made up for using luminecent polygons with radiosity (I'll post the files bellow for you to look at). Use this if you will need the lightning to light the scene.

The is key to make a copy of your poly chain to the background layer AFTER you've morphed it. Then you should select the points of background version and extrude/extend them out just a bit to make a chain of 4point polys. These will be your Lumi-gons. Give these a seperate surface with a high luminosity (something like 600% or higher). Send this over to Layout and select your background "Lumi-Polys" and hit "p" to bring up the objects properties. Go to the Render Tab and check "unseen by camera". You want this object to give off light- but not show up.
From here you'll have to set up your radiosity settings to your liking as well as global illumination etc. Now set up the visable electric arch like you did before, and animate it like you would have before (with morphs). If you are comfortable with simple expressions you can easily link the animated settings you put on your visable arch to the hidden Lumigons (as they should move together).


Please look at the files I've included (LW7.5c) and this should make more sense... good luck!

Maybe Riki can "illuminate" my babble a bit better...you should look through his great set of tutorials too regardess...

[wacom]

papou is totaly right! Please only use my version if you need to do A LOT of little archs everywhere and cheaply.

papou's way is great!



Here are my humble files (lwo, lws)...

[Brinson]

Thanks guys for all of your tips. I will share the results when I have completed the project. The render is for a newspaper infographic and I will be working on it for a couple more weeks.

Thanks again for all of you help.

Until next time...