Anim8or Community

General Category => General Anim8or Forum => Topic started by: lloonnee2 on July 19, 2010, 09:55:03 am

Title: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: lloonnee2 on July 19, 2010, 09:55:03 am
Well I was animating a lightsaber fight and encountered some problems while doing so. The main problem was that the 'solid' saber's moved through each other, which I know is to be expected in a animation program. However, to accurately ensure that each solid just touches but never goes through the other solid is tedious at best, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a feature, or something that makes a solid object act like a solid object.
I'm using the stable version of anim8or ( I think its v0.95), so if the new version has a feature like that, or if other animation programs such as blender or 3dmax have this feature, please tell me >.<

(Also, is Anim8or still being developed? I'm not sure if the author of Anim8or stopped developing it, seeing that the last entry to this website was 2 years ago about the v0.97 preview)
Title: Re: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: TheRetroZombie on July 19, 2010, 03:12:04 pm
I'm not sure. You'll just have to animate them not touching each other yourself.
Title: Re: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: ENSONIQ5 on July 19, 2010, 10:52:34 pm
More professional packages, like Carrara for example, have a collision detection feature which can be used to prevent objects intersecting as you mentioned.  Unfortunately no such feature in Anim8or yet, you'll need to keyframe carefully.

Tip: Lightsabres have a lot of glare, this could be put to good advantage in hiding a few little intersects.
Title: Re: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: lloonnee2 on July 20, 2010, 05:27:57 am
Was about to go "dang", but that's pretty brilliant :D
Guessing I'll tweak/play around with the textures a bit.
Title: Re: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: Water Music on July 20, 2010, 08:17:35 pm
In lieu of using textures you could steal Bioware's trick of making a lightsaber with different-sized cylinders - the larger the cylinder the more transparent the material you use.

Also, obscuring the point of contact between the sabres with a large flash is an easy way out that is consistent with the effects of the older movies.
Title: Re: Making a "solid" object solid
Post by: zack247 on July 21, 2010, 03:23:22 am
you know, i was wondering about the production of anim8or myself...