live 3d section video?

[Anonymous]

Is there a way, in AC11 or any other program, to take a model (made in AC11) and create a rendered movie of a section plane moving through the building?

In effect, much like moving a section plane through a model in SketchUp, but with the graphical output rendered rather than like SketchUp...

[Dwight]

Thanks for your help - I couldn't make this work, so the stinging "longest Ray Harryhausen workaround award" suggestion should be amended to the "longest Ray Harryhausen workaround that doesn't award"

Of course, we all know him to be responsible for the flying saucer landing in Washington DC sequence in "Earth Versus the Flying Saucers."

[Karl Ottenstein]

This is getting well into the Library forum and out of the Presentation forum, but....

I figured I'd try the old GDL method that Laszlo outlined...and I cannot get it to work in 11 either.

Attached is a screenshot of the simple object. Mostly a hack for testing. Works fine in the GDL 3D window as I manually vary the cutplane position to simulate the animation.

The 'tiny house' shows up fine in the 3D window. But, if I generate an animation, it doesn't show at all. I have a terrain slab under it that's all that I see in the animation.

Pretty weird/buggy behavior, but I've got to move on... Artlantis Studio is so easy for this stuff!

Karl

[Laszlo Nagy]

Seems to me like GS needs to be notified of this.
I will do it.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Karl wrote:
I figured I'd try the old GDL method that Laszlo outlined...and I cannot get it to work in 11 either.

While waking up this morning, I wondered if the problem was the OpenGL window. It was. When I use the internal engine, the old cutplane / object method works!

Attached is a QuickTime movie created from the internal engine 3D window showing that the object shown in the screenshot below works. Did not want to take the time to verify if LightWorks worked as well...

The SEOp method still does not work: SEOps are not updated during rebuilds of an animation.

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

Latest update: the cutting plane method does work in OpenGL after all. So, this method seems to work in all modes. The only 'problem'/hassle is that you have to save the model to be cut as a GDL object.

I've had no OpenGL problems at all on my 3 year old desktop with ATI Radeon 9700 Pro card. Have been running with a driver from this past summer. So, it did not seem likely that it was a display driver problem when the cutting (seen in the movie in the last post) was not seen in the OpenGL window but only the Internal Engine 3D window.

But, running something else today cause a BSD (blue screen of death) pointing to the ATI driver. I downloaded the new drivers that were posted on the ATI site this month...and the cut plane animation works fine now. Could be something related to the November Windows updates, as GS tech had posted elsewhere.

Cheers,
Karl

[Djordje]

Thanks for remembering, Laci! You da man!

I think this should be made into a Wiki article, with all the contribution from Karl included.

[Anonymous]

Whew...you guys are incredible...I didnt realize the can of worms I was opening. This has been just invaluable...of course I still havent had the chance to get into this since, as usual, the prof keeps changing my stuff just because he can (just LOVE it when they tell you your project is done but since theres still another week lets redo it instead of perfect it for better presentations)
Anyways, hopefully next week Ill get to play big guinnea pig for this on a more elaborate model. Ill post what I get here when its done.

Thank you all so much...this is why ArchiCAD cant be beat!

[Richard Morrison]

aggie463 wrote:
as usual, the prof keeps changing my stuff just because he can (just LOVE it when they tell you your project is done but since theres still another week lets redo it instead of perfect it for better presentations!

He's just getting you ready for what you'll encounter once you get into the 'real' world.

[Anonymous]

Ok finally crunch time...Im going to do a very basic run at this with SEOs rendering a frame then moving the cutting object...Im still most comfortable with this way for a test then I anyone could be so kind as to possibly translate all this GDL talk so I can make a bit more sense of it and how to do it. I think I have a basic idea but Im not real sure...

Thanks again so much!

[Anonymous]

Well...no good...I dont have any way to merge the images in a way that they look decent without having to move the cutting object so slighty each frame that this will take forever....
I noticed in Artlantis this could possibly be done quite simply, but I need to only cut one building of many on a site, not the whole thing...any thoughts?
Im going to make an attempt with this scripting business, well see how far I can get.