Hi again, Dr. Sassi, I want to use volume mesher to “erode” a portion of an object, and thought that I’d use a cube(rectangle)/spline wrap as a child to advance my cube along a spline, and have the front end of the cube ( rectangle really) start to erode/cut out a portion of an object; is it possible to connect a null object to a selection on the cube in order to have another object’s end ” follow that null”? imagine a laser cutter cutting along a path;if I am not clear , maybe the attachement helps?
One idea is to place the item that subtracts things into a MoGraph Tracer and use the resulting Spline as a source to keep things “subtracted”. I’m happy to set up an example if you like.
Thank you for this!!-yes, please would love to see what a mograph tracer option gives me-one thing though, why did you use Xpresso, need to figure out how to integrate that in my scene, can I do with out it? also, I can render a 12’ by 6’ scene in version 23?, thx
TThank you, but i do not see a selection tag-for my scene, I would just make the sphere invisible and make it a child of a long object, ie a pen tip, would that work? I just tried and it did not work, also the path of the sphere is keyframed?
The Sphere (or any object in the tracer list) will produce the path. This path (Spline[s]) can be used to create any object, like a Sweep. So we avoid the Selection or Xpresso entirely (as in the example above). (Sometimes, a rail path needs to be created as well, which can be done in the same way.)
I obviously miss something from your example scene. Would you mind elaborating a little bit more?
Sure, if you missed something, then I just didn’t explain it well enough ;:-I’m trying to ” erode away a tumor with a pen-like device, and this device moves , as if it is “painting away” the tumor, the devices moves, like you are painting, left-right, down a bit, left-right etc. The volume mesher solution i feel is good, unless you feel otherwise, the motion of the device will carve away the tumor if this is stil not clear, pls let me know, you are uber helpful to me as always
Craig, the Pen in my example, holds the animation via keyframes. The Sphere is a child and follows.
The Sphere is inside of the Tracer. The Tracer sets by default for each position one point and extends the Resulting Spline, which is just the summary of that point collection. (If the Trace Vertices is not checked off, you will get for each point of the Sphere a Spline, which might be useful, but a lot of calculations.
I hope I got your question correctly; then there is no need to produce any keyframes for the Tracer.
Thx Dr. sassi, but I was not clear, if my client changes their mind, and I have to change the “pen” path, how do I do that? also, I have a much larger object, base model about 40,000 the volume mesher method is too prohibitive, size wise, any alternatives that you can think of? I appreciate it
thx for the collision deformer file, very nice- what if I decide to change the path of the pen and start fresh do I keyframe the path of the pen? or is the path created automatically when I start the the animation, and activate ” auto keyframing” sprry I am not clear