How to independently target an objects individual polys?

[JNN]

Lets say I have a ball and I unweld its polys...anyone have any idea of how to have each of those individual polys target a null and rotate around its own center axis without having to save out each individual poly and reposition its pivot? I've had some success with dynamics, but nothing very clean. Its a tricky effect but if anyone had any input I'd love to hear it....

-John

[RudySchneider]

Hmmm...

It's not quite clear WHY you want to do this. Have you considered just creating a tesselated ball? By definition, each of its polygons will already be facing the center.

[ercaxus]

0- Go to flay com and get this:

http://www.flay.com/GetDetail.cfm?ID=1406

1 - Create a sphere

2 - Create a skelegon in the background layer in the center pointing down(-) on y axis.

3 - Unweld the sphere.

4 - While skelegon in the background select all the polygons and run the script.

5 - In layout create a null.

6 - Convert all the skelegons to bones.

7 - Select all the bones and target them to the null.

Good luck with bones/weighting :D

[Surrealist.]

That's a good idea.

[JNN]

Thanks ercaxus! This is exactly the type of thing I was trying to do!

Cheers
-John

[ercaxus]

No problem, but I'm just wondering, what do you need it for? I mean it's a pretty weird thing. :)

[JNN]

I am trying to manufacture a "poly flipping" effect whereby an effector runs down an object and the polys flip or "spin" as the effector passes through it...unfortunately the method you suggested would require a weight map for each individual poly effected by it's own bone...so that is out of the question. Nontheless, it was an awesome idea and caused me to think about the problem in a new way. It is a difficult effect that would best be done with some sort of procedural animation. I tried unwelding the object, fixing the polys and having them rotate or "spin" in space as a collision object runs through them but the effect looks very messy. The benefit of your targeted bones method is that each poly cantalevers based on it's own local axis...back to the drawing board.

-John

[munky]

Hello,

depending on the amount of spin and having LW 9 you could use a morph and the relativity morph deformer plugin. The morph is driven by an effector ( a null in this case)
like the example here

If you want the file to have a look at just let me know





hope this is of some help

regards

paul

[JNN]

Thanks Munky! That is very close to the look I am trying to achieve. I'd love to have a look at the scene if you have a chance...

-John

[munky]

Hi there,

The first scene might be more like what you want.



regards

paul

[evenflcw]

Munky, how did you create the morphs?

The other part, morphing by texture, or more specifically proximity to a null in this case, could be done with the native Normal Displacement plugin.

JNN, on what axis do you acctually want the plugins to spin? You've mentioned the origin but not the actual axis (on the heading, pitch, bank) and how it should be determined (what is the heading, pitch, bank on a tri, quad, pentagon etc?).

[munky]

Hi Evenflcw,

the orderly one is done the old fashioned way, by rotating the individual polys about their own axis (with the mouse set to Action Centre "selection" +F8)
and the random one uses Colkai's "Random Rotate" LScript.

regards

Paul