Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:29:14 -0000 From: Stephen Thornber Subject: [IML] Quest: Slinky! Hi all. For once, I've actually got a decent idea for an object/animation. but I can't build the damn object.. arrgghh!! :) Can anyone tell me or advise me how to build/animate a "Slinky" ---------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:24:57 -0000 From: Dom To the one asking about a slinky: go to http://www.3dcafe.com and look under the free models and then toys section. Don't know how well the 3ds file will convert to imagine. I'll experiment as well. ---------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 19:30:49 -0700 From: Charles Patterson Take a cross section of it, which would be a thin rectangle, then extrude it out, around, and up. I don't remember the exact settings and am not at home to look, sorry. For Animating it, create a few different versions of it, bent, stretched, etc and save them as states of the same object then morph between states. ---------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 19:35:37 -0700 From: Shawn Well, if the one at 3D cafe doesn't work, I experimented a little with creating one from scratch. Here's how: 1) Add an axis 2) Add a short line on the x-axis, but to the right of the y/z axis. The length will be the width of the slinky spring. Cheesy illustration: Front View (o = point) Z | +----X o---o 3) Extrude this to length around 600, 1000 sections and y-transform 18000 4) Extrude the resulting object to length 2, 1 section. 5) Go into pick points mode and select about one third of the object from either end of the coil. 6) Scale these points in the y-axis to about .65 7) Move the points back close to the main part of the object. 8) Repeat steps 5-7 for the other end of the coil. 9) Go back in pick object mode, rotate the object axis z+90 10) Move the axis to the center of the coil 11) Conform to cylinder with Cylinder radius 250, Object width 500. You should get something close to http://www.uidaho.edu/~shawnc/slinky.jpg As far as animating it goes... LOTS of states. ---------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 07:03:40 -0000 From: Dom I like Shawn's better, the 3ds one was (for me anyway) a little hard to animate... ---------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 08:51:46 -0400 From: Henri Smulders Build by using a lathe of your crossection. Build the thing stretched out! (say 7200 degrees with an offset of enough units to be able to see the loops separately from each other). Bone each loop and have the subregions substantially overlap each other! Animate bones. ---------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 22:45:49 EDT From: Phil Cook Steve, You can build a slinky with Darran William's excellent "Spiral Path Generator." Once you create the path, then you can extrude a simple box along the length of the path. It's going to take a fair amount of geometry though. Actually, I think you can do this in the Imagine Detail Editor anyway with out the "Spiral Generator." Then you could animate the Slinky.iob with the "conform to path" capability of the Action Editor. In the Stage Editor, make a series of paths for different key positions for the Slinky. Save them as separate Path.iobs and then morph between them. Conform the Slinky.iob object to the Path.iob. It should be very fluid and credible. Make sure than the Y axis runs the vertical length of the Slinky.iob. This is probably an extremely confusing explanation. Oh, well. I believe you can find Darran's utility by contacting him at: Darran@Braindead.demon.co.uk I hope this is helpfull. ---------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 19:25:39 +0100 From: Matthew O'Neill Organization: Furry things .Inc But it's still impossible to animate it to the quality of the dog in Toy Story though. the actual rings would stretch, so the gap between them would change just as much as the thickness if the slinky. ---------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:09:25 -0700 From: Shawn Clabough This is why I scaled the end zones for the slinky object I made. It compresses the coils where you need them to be. With enough states, you should be able to get something somewhat realistic. ----------------------------------