Jump to content
Hash, Inc. Forums

Where is the spherical geometry button?


Pitcher

Recommended Posts

Recently, I had occasion to be moving models on a sphere. To be more precise, I was moving ships on a globe to show travels. Well, guess what? The program moves models from point A to point B in a straight line. The ships kept submerging. Unless I put the ships well above the water, I have to change their location (z as well as x and y) very frequently as they move along the timeline. If I put them well above the water, the angle of view sometimes makes them look like they are very far from where I wanted them to be. Sometimes they look like they are on the land. This becomes an issue especially as they are approaching a port. Does anyone have any ideas? Is there a spherical geometry button that allows us convert to sperical geometry and insert the circumference of a sphere for the computer to automatically calculate the in-betweens using spherical geometry? I don't know much about any of this, but I thought someone else might.

 

It could be used for a mosquito or fly to roam across a person's nose or some other sphere. There are probably many uses I will never think of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Hash Fellow

One solution would be to constrain a ship to a bone that is at the center of the sphere, then animates the bone to move the ship on the surface of the sphere.

 

You would use both a Translate and Rotate constraint in this case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a great idea, robcat 2075. I think that would probably work. Thanks for the idea! It occurs to me that this question resulted from my trying to animate by moving something from point to point until I reached a destination. I became locked into that way of thinking. I kept putting more in-betweens to see if that would fix the problem. It didn't. After I posted this, I sat down and relaxed waiting for an answer, and it occurred to me that I should just make a path for each ship and constrain each ship to its path. Paths often go in a circular way. I should have gotten away from the problem for a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did the paths for each of the ships. Everything looks fine from the Front View, but when I render, they still go underwater. I've decided this happens because rendering does some sort of smoothing to the globe and makes it slightly larger. The result is that the ships go underwater. I hate to think there is something that cannot be done, but maybe this is it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...