Installation of my prop - making a hole to clear it?
This might be glaringly simple, or stupefyingly complex. Here's the deal. I've made a wall safe. (Finally done, nearly ready to give away.) So if there's no need to open it, it's simple - select object and position it against a wall so it sticks out a bit.
BUT (you knew there was one) for a concealed safe, if it's onlly slightly protruding, the wall itself will poke through. See pics below. Image 1 is safe when the frame is about 5-6 cm out from the wall. Image 2 shows a side view. And even if it was proud of the surface, when I get it rigged to open (and handle turns, moving the locking pins - I've already tested that, so it's just a matter of making it part of the 'product'), when it opens, all you'll see is the wall, not the interior.
What I need is a way to install the safe that automagically pokes a hole in whatever prop it's installed to - if that's even possible. Or do I need to add another object that's installed first that does a boolean cut or something similar?
Comments
BTW, how can I upload the file (zipped folders) for any of you to review? Tried attaching it, but after about 20 min of it saying 'uploading', I gave up.
It's probably too big to be uploaded in the forums. You will likely need to put in on some file sharing system (eg dropbox, google drive) and share a link, or maybe send it by email to your testers.
As for your initial question, if I understand correctly you would want something that would poke a hole in "whatever wall was used"? I don't think it's possible to have an universal solution like that...
What you are after is a boolean operation. DS cannot do booleans. I think there was an add-on that could dom some, but I do'nt think that would solve what you want.
Furthermore booleans has a high risk of creating N-gons, and DS/Iray don't like N-gons.
So I would say you can't do what you want automatically.
As leana says, it's basically impossible.
The reason this won't work, most DS assets are just a single polygon for walls.
To get this to work you need to subdivide the surface sufficiently to allow placement, then perform a boolean to remove the requisite polygons.
That's what I was afraid of. It'd be nice to have an intial prop that was a big block of 'negative' to boolean dissolve wherever the safe was going, but if it's not practial...
Maybe I should just bite the bullet and do a wall section with the safe in it. Matching textures might be a trick for mating to other wall bits, but I could then include the 'picture on hinges' to conceal the safe. (Or mirror, or whatever. Exposing that surface so anyone could put any image they wanted on that picture? But - matching the 'create a room' stuff - especially the
Bah - the problems with having a little bit of ADD - got distracted and didn't finsih.
I use room-creator (or whatever it's called - not on main system so I can't look it up). Matching the trim / moulding is the issue. Textures on the walls? Okay, I can do that. So it creates its own problems. Could suggest people take a wall into Blender, subdivide, move a few edges, punch a hole in one, and insert the safe. Yeah, no. Don't think many would go for that. So - kind of a cool but maybe practically-useless prop in the long run.
If it's a palin wall you could either use a bunch of palnes, or cubes for better light-proofing, to makae the wall in sections around the safe or just use a plane or cube with enough divisions to have edges around the safe and use a dForm or Pursh Modifier to suck them back a bit to avoid pokethrough. Apply the wall materails to the cube, adjusting tiling as needed, and hide the actual wall mesh.
Got it figured with the Create-a-Room pack. Complicated, tedious but it works. Get the wall ALL done with textures, etc. and position the safe. Export it as OBJ file. Import to Blender. (Best with a plain wall, but this will work adjacent to a door or window - just a tighter fit. Take the wall into edit mode, subdivide it, then slide the new edges in place under the faces of the safe. Delete the center face (best do to front and back at the same time if you use Create-A-Room). Make sure there's no poke-through. Export the wall and import back into Daz. The texturing and stuff from the Daz resource will be broken, but the wall will have a hole for the safe. Image is Blender showing the wall division lines. Second is with safe in place - no poke-through.
As I said, tedious, and it requires knowledge of Blender, but it WILL work. Sort of. The benefit of doing it this way is that the baseboards and mouldings and such stay with the wall, so it fits back in. Just don't resize it. Now to get it rigged. So - once it's all done, I'll post a 'how to' with it as well.
Then on to the next project. Gun safe? Walk-in wall safe? Old style round oak table (with leaves) and a set of chairs? Triple dressing mirror? Parts of a 'assemble what you need' closet-size wardrobe (7 types of components)?