Animating a Special Effect

Set up the lesson:

• Open spaceship06.max from the \tutorials\edit_poly directory, or continue from the previous lesson.

Animate a sub-object selection:

1. Select the Spaceship1 object. On the Modify panel, choose the Vol. Select modifier from the Modifier List to apply it to the object. You'll find it near the top of the list, in the Selection Modifiers category.

   

   By default, the Volume Select modifier gizmo takes the shape of a box, its volume encompassing that of the spaceship.

2. On the Parameters rollout, set Stack Selection Level to Vertex.

   

3. In the modifier stack display, expand the Vol. Select entry and click Gizmo to access its sub-object level.

   

4. On the Main toolbar, open the Transform flyout and choose Select And Non-Uniform Scale.

5. Right-click the Select And Non-Uniform Scale button. On the Scale Transform Type-In dialog, set Offset: World > X to 10.0. Close the dialog.

   This shrinks the gizmo so that it can select only a slice of the spaceship at a time.

   

6. Move the gizmo about –70 units on the X axis so that it's in front of the spaceship.

   

   The gizmo sits in front of the spaceship in the Front viewport.

7. Turn on Auto Key, go to frame 20, and then move the gizmo about 140 units on the X axis so it's behind the spaceship.

   

   At frame 20, the gizmo sits behind the spaceship in the Front viewport.

8. Scrub the time slider.

   The vertex selection changes as the gizmo passes over the spaceship.

   

   At frame 10, the animated Volume Select gizmo selects the vertices in the middle of the spaceship.

Extrude the animated sub-object selection:

1. Apply another Edit Poly modifier to the spaceship.

2. On the Edit Poly Mode rollout, choose Animate.

   

   This allows modeling in Edit Poly to be animated, either explicitly by setting keyframes, or procedurally by applying the modeling to an animated sub-object selection. In this case, you'll use the latter method.

3. On the Selection rollout, click the Vertex button, and then turn on Use Stack Selection.

   

   Use Stack Selection uses the sub-object selection passed up the stack as the Edit Poly sub-object selection at each frame.

4. Scrub the time slider.

   The animated vertex selection from the Volume Select modifier passes over the spaceship, as before.

5. On the Edit Vertices rollout, click the Extrude Settings button.

   This opens the Extrude Vertices dialog.

6. Set both Extrusion Height and Extrusion Base Width to 5.0.

   

7. Scrub the time slider.

   In each frame, Edit Poly applies the extrusion only vertices selected in that frame, so the extrusion effect passes over the spaceship. This shows the result of the spaceship being hit by the “prickly-wave” weapon. You can, if you like, change the time and duration of the effect by moving the keys in the track bar.

Smooth the spaceship:

• From the Modify panel > Modifier List, choose the TurboSmooth modifier to add it to the stack. On the TurboSmooth rollout, set Iterations to 2 and turn on Isoline Display.

  
  
  The spaceship is now complete. You can view the final results of this tutorial in the file spaceship_final.max in the \tutorials\edit_poly folder .