A Way to Open Doors in Walls that Weren't Created to Open?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,152
When there is a model of a building, and there are doors and windows, but they were not created to open and close, is there something I can do to make it look like they are being opened and closed? Is there some way to make a rectangular hole in the wall, where the door is?
Thanks!
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I did this once in Hexagon, selected all the facets of the door and turned them into an actual door. It was not easy, especially for me, who is a raw beginner with Hex, but I did get it done.
if there's geometry to match the window or door frame,
you could use polygon selector (or grouping tool in poser) to assign a new material and make it transparent
Or even to split the item down into separate meshes, but how well that would work would depend on whether there was enough mesh to look sensible.
I'm not a modeler but wouldn't it be possible to make a transparency map to make the door invisible, then create a new door model and insert it into the transparent space? Doors are relatively simple, just one or two planes (or thin boxes) with pivot point on one edge.
You don't even need to create a door, just take one from a free prop (there are many around), or from any other props or scenes you might own that includes a separate door. Size it to fit the space, and then rotate it to make it look partially open.
If there's no geometry there, I think that would be the most sensible option.
what kind of buildings?
the victorian shoppes doors open. the snow can be made transparent, there's geometry underneath it.
Will editing a mesh not break the UV map?
Depends where you edit it - in DS, using the Geometry Edit tool, no and I think Poser's Grouping \Tool is safe too. Actual modellers vary, though cutting and pasting is a relatively safe operation.
Interesting - thanks...
The biggest thing you have to verify is the mesh geometry. E.g., you need the edge of the door to fall on an edge boundary between polygons. If they modeled the door as part of the wall, and instead relying on the texture maps to make it look like a door vs. the surrounding wall, then you're out of luck, since you can't split polygons in Studio.
But if the door has discrete geometry of its own, you can use the geometry editor (as it's now called in 4.7) to select the faces of the door and make them their own material. Now you can easily hide it/etc. More advanced would be to use the joint editor to add a bone and then paint a weight map onto the door geometry and have a door you can actually move around. A simpler approach is to create a D-Form and then switch the D-Form to use weight map influence (probably the single hugest feature for me in 4.7 -- been using this a LOT) and then paint the door to respond to the D-Form. This avoids figuring out joint editor.
if the door is modeled with no thickness (e.g., it's just a plane), then it will probably look pretty fake if you open it part way. Playing with your camera angle can help mitigate this illusion buster.
What's the Elvish word for "Friend"?
Mellon (mehl-on)
Google is your Mellon 8-O
"A simpler approach is to create a D-Form and then switch the D-Form to use weight map influence (probably the single hugest feature for me in 4.7"
You lost me there. I know how to do D-Formers but if it's not too cumbersome to explain, what do you mean by weight map influence?"
EDIT: And did something change in 4.7 from 4.6?
Create the basic DForm, and I would suggest move the field right away so that there's no initial effect if you are wanting to do something very different from what can be done with a single field. Then activate the Node Weight Map brush and open the Tool Settings pane, you should see Influence Weights in the Unused maps list, make sure it's selected and click Add map. Edit the weight map.
Mellon (mehl-on)
Google is your Mellon 8-O
*door starts to rumble*
Here's a quick example of what can be done with a few basic tools. The building is from Urban Sprawl 2, and the door is merely a cube which borrows from the original models textures so that they would match. I added a couple of extra cubes, one to act as the plate for the lock and another for the bolt which was deformed into a wedge.
The room beyond is the living room with a few items inside made invisible by changing the opacity to zero. All in all, took maybe 10 minutes to do. Very quick and dirty, but it shows what you can do with a little time and imagination.
I'm pretty sure the weight map influence mode for D-Formers was added in 4.7, not 4.6, but I could be wrong. Either way, they radically changed the usability of D-formers in my book. The old way of moving a sphere around was fiddly at best, and downright frustrating most of the time (especially when a sphere wasn't conducive to the shape you needed to modify). And never really gave results I was happy with. Now that you can paint weight maps for the D-Former, and use all the tools available for polygon selection/etc to do so, it makes creating very precise D-Formers MUCH easier. I've used it to create breast spans in tops for females, for example, where the D-Form shape needs to be more cylindrical than spherical, and was mostly something I'd given up on in the past with D-Formers. I also use it to fix dangling earrings so they look like they're actually affected by gravity (since most earring props have no morphs to do this included), fix hair that doesn't have sufficient movement morphs, etc. It's opened a whole new level of editing to me in Studio.
Create a D-Former as you normally would. Select the _Field entry for the D-Former, and in Parameters, change Influence Mode from Sphere to Weight Map. Now switch to the Node Weight Map Brush tool. In the Weight Maps tab, you'll have "Unused Maps: Influence Weights". Click 'Add Map'. At this point, you have a weight map that mimics whatever the default sphere that was created when you created the D-Former applied to it. So you want to set polygon selection mode, right click in the viewport and choose "geometry selection -> select all" and then right-click again and select "weight editing -> fill selected" and set 0% and click OK. This clears the converted sphere influence and now you can use all the weight map tools to paint the specific weight map you want for the D-Former.
Many thanks for that detailed explanation. I knew about that option but couldn't get it to work yet and couldn't find any explanation about it either. I don't know much about weight mapping yet but I will surely try that soon.
Sigrid