How to create a pin matrix effect

[david.jones]

Hi, I am trying to create a pin matrix toy style effect on a buildings south elevations as a type of brise soliel that can move fins in and out over time and respond to weather & time of year etc.

 

The most similar thing i can think of was this which i remember seeing on evolo site; http://www.evolo-arch.com/bskyh.html

 

There was a tutorial for a pin art toy in 3d world issue 106, but alas it was for maya. I'm guessing scripting is pretty much the only way to do this but i have no idea how to tackle it.

 

Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated...

[Paul Twyman]

Hey,

 

I did something a bit like this back when I was at college, all be it a much much simpler concept than the link you posted.

That used an animated displacement map to deform a plane and then maxscript to create instances of a pin object at every vertex of the plane (the plane was set to non renderable) then as the vertices move with the animation from the displacement so do the pins.

[jucaro]

How about displacements?

[Claudio Branch]

Cool challenge...I would like to see some solutions!

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I was looking at my old pinscreen animations just last night. Let me see if I can find the source...

 

Think it was a plane. Displaced. With pins Scattered.

 

Yup. Plane with as many faces as I want pins. Displace modifier. Pick your map. Can be animated. Create a single pin (just a box on the attached but I've used capsule). Delete the bottom to save faces. Scatter pin on plane. Set to Perpendicular off (though it's cool on as well). All Vertices - wait, make the plane 1 less in width and height.

 

You might think All Face Centers is the thing to do. I did. But I think it uses triangles not quads. So that's bad. Vertices works grand.

 

Make your pin tall enough that it hides the base of the one next to it if there's a big displacement.

 

Hide scatter distribution object and original plane.

[Koper]

here is a move to surface script from scriptspot, and the guy says its straight from the maxScript refr file, so it should be easy to modify as you want

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/move-to-surface

[jucaro]

If youre using vray, there's a sticky about it over at the chaos forums. Wouldnt be hard to translate to mental ray either.

[Renato1]

http://www.alzhem.com/sub1/tutorials.htm

 

Here is a displacement tutorials, but i can remmber a tutorial where you use hair and fur with a instanced node and then use a displacement map to control the z height. I can not find it.

 

Cheers

Renato

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Renato reminds me, I did some of my favela work with instanced hair and a scaling bitmap. Issue might be getting the regular grid from the hair. I'll go look. Thanks for the idea.

[david.jones]

Thanks for all the responses guys, i also ran this same thread on cgsociety, got some very usefull solutions, one of which i decided to use by the user bobo.

 

Well worth a look.

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5482699#post5482699

[Koper]

that pinscreen file looks coool man, thanx for posting your solution here as well! good job

[david.jones]

Yeah, note i wanted to explore angle and/or offset.

 

Bobo posted solutions for both, the angle version is really cool too.

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=98&t=489438&highlight=PFlow

 

Also, the script at http://www.pxfactory.eu/scripts/pinsman/pinsman.html is perfect if all you want to do is produce offsets only.