A Bryce-like solution that might work if you don't look too close: duplicate the boat, neg boolean the dup with the water. booleans aren't perfect in C2 - has this been improved in C3? I think you might also find something about how to do this on Poser forum from a long time ago. anyrate a search under canoe might bring something up there.

I think if you make a copy of the boat... but make it solid/filled then make this new one transparent... (not invisible) using a transparent shader I think that will work.

Booleans were improved, both in C3 and in the latest patch to C3.

Even if you fill the canoe with a second smaller copy of it, won't that copy still be a 3D-surface, like other Carrara objects? In other words, it only has polygons on its surface, not in its interior. But I admit, if we were trying to animate a canoe moving along, it would be a bummer having to animate a boolean all the way. We would probably have to use a low camera angle, so the viewers couldn't see inside the canoe.

Animation is always tricky and admittedly what I've proposed is only a partial solution that is best looked at as an idea that needs to be expanded upon but it might work until something better comes along; and it stimulates the conversation along these lines. It might be tricky, but if you could move the xyzs of the canoe and the bool canoe as a group without having to redo the boolean operation every time that would indeed be a timesaver. but the water needs to change too ... animation is one can of worms after another, eh?

Yeah, that's right. You could apply a morph/magnet to create a canoe cavity in the water surface, and then animate the morph/magnet.

Worth a try - at least it's an idea that goes beyond boolean subtraction. Good thought!

If you create your water surface using tiled planes (rather than an Infinite Plane) you could use a trans map to make the water inside the canoe transparent. Take a shot of the plane and canoe from directly above using the Isometric camera and then use that as a template for your map. Make a MultiChannel Mixer shader with the water in one channel, everything zeroed except transparency (100%) in the other and the map as the blender. Use this shader (projection mapping) only on the canoe water plane. Should work.

Message edited on: 07/15/2004 03:13

You could also use the same type of a map to use as a height map for your tiles rather than as a transparency as well but it's hard to get the vertical exaguration right in height maps; either way you have to match the edges of the tiles so you don't see the seams, but still another good idea!

Thinking in terms of photoshop, I just thought you might be able to make a two layered height or transparency map one with the water and another with a relatively small canoe cutout on another layer of which you should be able to move for each frame of an animation. That would get rid of having to match tiles. I understand later versions of PS have a way to handle animation sequences but I don't know anything about that. Anyrate another idea to try.

I tried to boolian subtract the canoe from an infinate plane. It worked.... but, because of of the shape of the canoe, just the outline of the boat was cut out. It didn't punch out a whole hole. The canoe whould have to be solid?

You might have to take your duplicate into the vertex modeler and create a surface along the top of the canoe; carefully select the surface vertices of the top of the canoe and "weld selected" might work. then go back to the assembly room and do the negative boolean with the water.

"Weld selected" will squash the canoe. You'll need to use the link tool and then fill the polygons.

1.) Boolean cut out the hole for the boat in the plane. 2.) Take the plane into the vertex modeler and delete out the polys that survive in the hole for the boat. 3.) Group the plane (with the boat hole) and the boat. In your animation, move the boat and plane together. 4.) Make sure the texture you apply to the plane is set for global coordinates and not local ones. That way the texture won't move when the plane moves. See if that works. -Kix

BTW for waves: has anyone checked into asemblyroom:modifiers:+:waves:waves on the main pull out and move the phase control back and forth? It looks like you could come up with some monster animated sea waves that way if you could modify the phase frame by frame. anyrate it looked neat on a terrain (dune) which I exported as an obj and reimported.

Attached Link: http://homepage.mac.com/scottspringer/resources/discussion/water_composite.html

Unfortunately, if you're not lined up exactly, you may see a gap between the water and the boat hull. Which would ruin your illusion.

I think the simplest, fastest, almost no-brainer way to solve this problem is to use compositing. If you're making a still image, it's perfect. If you are making an animation, it's a wee bit trickier, but still doable.

http://homepage.mac.com/scottspringer/resources/discussion/water_composite.html

Follow this link to see a quick example of what I'm talking about.

Using previous models I built, I was able to animate, render and composite this animation (using Photoshop of all things!) in about 2 hours of total work.

Most of the time was spent screwing around w/ Photoshop (for some reason my copy of QuickTime Pro stopped exporting otherwise I would have used that.

Could you not build your boat and water as one vertex object in the vm and use shading domains to texture the water and boat .Then all you would have to do is select vertices for both the boat and waters edge around the boat and move them where you want the boat to go. I think this should work. Mike