CGTalk - geometry to displace geometry. Is there a way in Max?

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gustojunk

06-02-2005, 07:41 PM

I've been dreaming of a way to add detail (non-destructively) to a model by having geometry affecting a mesh. I was suggesting this to Andrea for his Polyspeed plugin. Then it occurred to me that maybe this is something that already exists. I went to scriptspot and I found: GEOFORM V1_0 Written By Andrew Oakley in 1999 for Max 2. It's and old thing but basically does what I want. (see attached mesh example) I have not installed that one because I'm afraid it will make Max7 upset.

I'd like to know if there is something like that for current version of Max that not only works on meshes but also on editable polys (and with turbosmooth applied). Ideally I like to use not just 3d objects to drive the displacements but also splines, renderable splines and shapes. Does such a thing exist?

Thanks,

Gustavo

-Vormav-

06-02-2005, 07:53 PM

Not sure if there's a more recent version of something like that...
What would really seem best to me though is to have something along the lines of C4D's Proximal shader. From what I've read about it, the shader has the surface of your object be shaded by the proximity of objects that you specify. There's an example video of this in the C4D forums where they have a plane reacting and being displaced downwards where two spheres are contacting it as it rolls around.
There could be a lot of useful applications for such a shader, especially if it wasn't just limited to displacement mapping.

Steve Green

06-02-2005, 08:42 PM

Hi,

You can do it with particles, mesher and a volume select + a displace.

You could also try this

http://www.max3dstuff.com/max4/objectDeform/objectDeformV6.zip

- Steve

gustojunk

06-08-2005, 01:12 PM

Thanks for the replies,

Vormav,
The proximal shader stuff looks awesome, I wish Max had that.

Steve,
The object deformer in theory is what I want, however this only works with tri-meshes and it looks like you have to add the desired density to hold your detail to your entire mesh. This is a similar shortcoming of the Max Displace modifier.

I was hoping to find a solution that does some kind of microdisplacement only adding detail when needed in a non-destructive way. So the obect that is being deformed can be a very light smoothed subD object.

Does anybody know of anything else?

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