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reference material Simple Footprints |
Spring 2006ss |
| The purpose of this tutorial is to show a simple way to create footprints in sand,dirt, or other loose surface. This method works best for scenes with a flat or nearly flat ground plane. There are many, more realistic, methods for creating footprints, but this method works best with stylized animations where realism is not the main focus. This tutorial assumes that you already know how to animate a walk-cycle and are capable of building a scene that requires the covered material. |
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Process 1. Open modeler and load the character that you wish to have footprints. |
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2. Select the polygons on the bottoms of the feet. Copy these polys (Ctrl+c), delete everything, and paste (Ctrl+v) the polys back into modeler. These polygons justify the overall shape of the footprint. (Figure 1) 3.Save the new object as footprint.lwo, or anything else you want to name it. NOTE: Remember to use Save As and change the name of the object. DO NOT just hit Save or this new object will replace your character. |
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4. Select all of the points. (Figure 2) |
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| 5. Open the Point Info window by pressing i. (Figure 3) Change the Y value for all the points to 0m. This makes the polygons completely flat. |
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| 6. Select the polys again and press f to flip their direction. (Figure 4) Copy the right foot and paste into the second layer. This gives us the ability to move each print independently. |
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7. Press q to change the surface of all the polys. Name the new surface footprint. (Figure 5) Save the object again. 8. Load the scene that you want to put the footprints in. |
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| 9. Open the Surface Editor window (F5) and copy the surface of your ground plane. Paste these values into the footprint surface. (Figure 6) This keeps the surface consistent between the ground plane and the footprint. |
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| 10. Change the "Diffuse" value for the footprint surface to about 75%. (Figure 7) This allows us to distiguish the footprint from the ground by darkening the surface. Close the surface editor. |
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| 11. Select the footprint object in the scene and open to Object Properties window by pressing p. Under the Render tab, deselect the "Self Shadow" and "Cast Shadow" buttons and keep "Receive Shadow" selected. (Figure 8) This makes it so that the footprint object does not produce shadows of any kind, but is able to receive shadows. |
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12. Move the footprint directly under the foot and move vertically so that it is just barely above the ground plane. (Figure 9) This gives the illusion that the footprint is actually part of the ground. 13. Make a keyframe at the point of contact, and then move one keyframe before. Under the Modify tab, select "Stretch" (h) and change all the values to zero. This keeps the foot print hidden until the point of contact. 14. Clone the footprint object, Items>Add>Clone, and repeat step 13 for every time the foot touches the ground. |
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web page contact: Vonda Yarberry |
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