how is it done (object building itself ground up))

[malikai666]

Ive been seeing a lot of this lately though I couldnt find any examples to show. basically Im trying to figure out how (for example) I can make an object appear to be building itself from the ground up. So lets say I had a 3d box wich were made of just lines not solid but outlined. how could I make that appear to be building itself from the ground up. where it looks like the lines just seem to be growing upward and connecting to eachother. In 2d I would use masks to simulate this effect but Im not sure in 3d. would I use morpfhs to achieve this? Ive also seen somethin similar on a ryder or uhaul storage commercial were the buildings are being built by boxes that unfold (hard to explain unless youve seen the commercial) and build things from the ground up. where 1 layer flips upward and starts adding walls to the outlined object. Hope this makes some sense.

[ackees]

I saw a Maya demo where they were showing off something called modelling history (or something like that), basically in Maya you can keep a complete history of everything you did to make a model (every step or action) and then replay it back at various stages of construction thus creating the effect of the model growing out of nothing. I am not sure but LW does not have this feature, you would probably have to cheat it somehow.

[prospector]

yep
morphs, not hard, just tedious
which is why they have many on payroll to do it:)

Simple building would go like this;

make your 2 or 3 story building, house, whatever.

now comes the thinking part..how you want it to build itself..

so we'll make the floors build then the wings last.(built on a ranch house design).

go to 1 side of building (garage side) and highlight the outside walls, make a new morph, move those points in to the garage door points,grab the new garage door points and create new morph,and drag all highlighted points to other side of garage door, highlight new points and create new morph, and drag to main house, other side the same way, then start at roof and and move points and highlight ,and make morphs till you get to ground level.Save object

In layout,load model, and from your notes of the order of your morphs,run each morpf to 100%,which will give you a flat plane at ground level,set keyframe to 0, now reverse the morphs to 0% for about 5 frames each in the opposite order, and the house will build itself.

if you set the textures in modeler it willgrow with textures attached.

Any building can be done in any shape this way.

like I said tho..very tedious, but nice effect.