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Thread: cracked mirror animation

  1. #1
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    Default cracked mirror animation

    So say you have a mirror in a scene and you want to break the mirror apart AND you want the sections of the image to go with the parts falling off the wall....HOW.

    Here are my thoughts so far.

    The mirror has the sections prebroken but you put a layer above it that is not broken that shows the image. Then you remove the solid mirror with image in one single frame to show the sections.
    The sections then are animated to fall or move as you like.

    Any suggestions on how to break the image apart and apply it to the pieces?

    In LSX I'd do a ton of masks and only show the part visible in the section of mirror. The rest of the image would be invisible.

    How to do this in Beyond is Ahem....Beyond me. Masking is either REALLY bad or I'm missing something. Layering is just sloppy and not working right.

    Guess I will do it in LSX and ilda export but I'd like to do it natively.

    This isn't a simple falls off wall. I want the pieces to tumble away. I can animate the pieces in 3dsmax no problem. I can apply a texture if this was video but you can't render a texture per say in laser that I am away of.

    For that matter how would you show reflected objects in a scene in laser as the mirrors tumble. Maybe I'm asking too much of laser.

    this is for the WHO Smash the Mirror if your wonder why I need this.

  2. #2
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    Jul 2019
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    Default

    Hi. If you still working on this I may be able to help you but it's not clear to me what exactly you are trying to accomplish.
    I've programmed games in the old DirectX 8 days where we had to fake mirrors in video games and while I wasn't doing the 3d modelling and animations I did learn 3dsmax at one point for some personal pet projects.

    I wouldn't recommend emulating a mirror exactly. The scanners can't display enough patterns for the audience to appreciate the extra work you put in. I mean if you have a scene on the mirror in a realstic simulation and the mirror breaks, whether with a fracture addon or manually modelling the pre-broken pieces, the scene on each mirror piece would have to rotate based on the angle of each fractured piece each frame as they rotate falling down. This can't be done with a texture.
    Yes, you could add a texture on the mirror but then as you said the edge detection would ignore any lines on the textures.
    Instead you can add a texture to a surface in 3dsmax and use the texture as a guide for drawing the needed lines again as 3dsmax edges rather than pixel data in the texture or in other words rotoscoping a single image. After you are done drawing your edges just remove the texture and use the hand-drawn edges as the "texture". Have the edges protruding a little from the faces to avoid Z-fighting. Then have your drawn lines rendered separately from the mirror pieces and mask them so the lines are behind the mirror pieces. If you have the lines on the pieces and have them follow the falling pieces you will be simulating breaking a picture rather than a mirror, but maybe that is what you prefer. If you go with masking, you'd want the mirrored image larger than the mirror otherwise the broken pieces will show nothing outside of the small silhouette of the original mirror.

    You could get fancier such as attaching a camera to each mirror piece, rendering a separate reflection for each piece and compositing the reflection or doing actual reflections in 3dsmax and rotoscoping each frame by drawing edges of the reflections but no matter the budget for this project this is likely a waste of time unless you have many scanners to display discernible reflections.

  3. #3
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    Default

    good points. I decided to just let it shatter using Pflow and call it a day. You are right. A lot of work nobody but me will even notice. i might try the camera route however just for fun to see how it looks. I had not thought of that. That's a cool idea. Not for laser but good for video.

  4. #4
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    For video I wouldn't use my suggestion. 3dsmax already supports mirror materials so you would be doing something the hard way producing subpar results. Even for realtime projects I'd just use cube maps for mirror reflections.
    Anyway, good to hear you went with a solution that worked for you.

  5. #5
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    I just tried it for a flock of f18 airplanes to simulate the blueangels looking at each other from the cockpits. Worked well. I usually only use one camera. This was just four cameras. It gives a lot more options at render.

    I use Max more like solidworks these days. Skinning boning kinematic are just beyond me at this time. It’s all been static objects. I’ll learn animation some day.

  6. #6
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    Jul 2019
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    Good to hear.
    I too use Max as a CAD design program. It's not really intended for it and lacks features but when you know it pretty well and know little about Solidworks it's still better.

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