I’ve given up on waiting for artistic direction, and have jumped right in to prototyping for my animation. I’ve got a working rubber glove, and last night I made some tank tracks. I might write up a proper tutorial later. In the mean time, here are some screen grabs of the treads. Good luck deciphering them!
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You’ll need to play with the position of the mesh array relative to the path. Notice that if you move the mesh in one particular dimension, the whole tread crawls. Give the mesh and path a common parent to allow animation.
A lattice (not shown) is used to add extra deformation, such as the dip in the top of the track. For my purposes, I then bound the lattice to an armature to control it.
Issues
- Along the chain the links connect fine, but not at the ends of the array. This is because the chain is stretched to make the ends meet, and I can’t see an easy way to make them overlap. Maybe creating the teeth using a displacement map (applied later in the stack) would solve the issue.
If you use this technique I’d love to hear about it!
[photopress:JusoPark.jpg,thumb,alignleft]We lived in Juso for eight months or so. It’s not known for its beauty. I knew of one park, but it didn’t interest me due to the lack of grass. If only I’d found this narrow park nestled between two roads earlier!
That night Chris scored 180 points in one round of darts at Bull-holic Colour. Their gin and tonics leave a very limey taste on the lips. I wonder if they use cordial or lime essence?
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I’ve written before about feelings of detachment. This time it’s different. I’m definitely aware of life and my surroundings, and yet it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening to me. The feeling is even stronger when I remember previous jobs and places I’ve been in. I remember them clearly, but they seem like somebody else’s life, or stories that I’ve read.
I recently bought a takoyaki grill, and on Friday I tried it out. I hadn’t had takoyaki since becoming vegetarian (on account of it containing octopus). I had been missing out, but I won’t any more!
Instead of octopus I used mushroom (hence the title of this post), but otherwise it’s the same stuff. Actually I think the title is incorrect since the kanji reads differently depending on where it appears in a word. It should probably be the less amusing “kinokoyaki”.
Japanese people have responded to this without surprise so much as with disbelief. They look at me as if I’m quite balmy. I haven’t told them that after the takeyaki I also made chokobananayaki for dessert.