I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make a candy cane's spiral stripes rotate like a barber pole. I think I can do it for the most part by modeling just a straight pole with vertical stripes, then twisting and bending it in an action. the tricky part is creating a material with vertical stripes on all sides of a pole. It seems like there should be a simple solution but after some testing I couldn't arrive at anything.

The Extended GridTurb combiner can make radial stripes

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That's good to know! I've just worked out a quick and dirty test using an animated decal that I think will work. the beginning and end frames aren't synced up properly but this is a start. I may play around with the GridTurb material though.

And if you bought the old "Enhance AM" pack that has a Spiral combiner which still works in V16 (32 bit) even those were written way back in V10 days

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that's what I'm talking about! Is this still available? Purchase necessary?

Here's an all-material, no-decal attempt

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His website is still up, and it appears to have an active purchase page ($50)

http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_am/index.htm


I haven't tested all of his plugins but the regular two-part combiners seems to work as expected (they ain't easy though). The few ones that use more than two colors seem not to work right.

It's a huge load of combiners and materials that go beyond the basic ones included in A:M.

Niice! Thanks Robert.

I did download a full-function trial version and I'm playing around with them. I may have some questions as I progress.

Okay, I installed them I think. But they don't seem to be coming up in my materials and I don't see the folder where I thought I installed them, or any folder with a likely-sounding name. I uninstalled and reinstalled but came up empty. Do I need to select a folder in the options settings?

Installer? I didn't know it had one! When i bought it it was a zip file and I had to move the various files to the right folders.

The Spiral is a .trb and goes in the turbulences folder.

do a search and see if you got any new .trb files anywhere on your drive.

Yeah, it's a standard windows installer, select a folder, etc. and it runs. Maybe I'll uninstall and install in on my desktop and see what's in there, but first I'll look in the various folders in the app folder a little closer.

EDIT: okay, well I have my answer. The demo is only five or six of the materials. Looks like I'm gonna have to pony up!

Purchased the full package today and have been playing with them. There are some awesome textures and materials, but like any package like this, a few will be standouts and others hardly used. Great fun to experiment and test though!

Good to hear that it's actually still being sold.

There's a lot of power in there for people who are into nesting combiners.

Also, like you said, the full package doesn't have an installer. Just unzip and put them in the correct folders.

Hey Robert, could you post that .prj for the spiraling candy cane? did you straighten out the cane crook in an action to apply the material? I'm fiddling with it and I've only just started but I can see where it will take a little trial and error. Any pointers would help.

I modeled the cane straight, applied the material, and the made a pose to bend it into cane-shaped.

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If I were to do the opposite, model the curved cane and then use an action to straighten it, and apply the material in the action, the effect would be the same, wouldn't it?

Robert, I downloaded your .prj but I'm not seeing where the twist is animated. I have a feeling I'll find it as soon as I post this, but could you tell me where to look?

Unfortunately that only works for decals. As far as I can tell.



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I probably rotated it by keying values in the mat's Rotate Z properties. I probably did one key and then did "convert to Euler" and then redid it to make a simple 0 to 360 channel. And then I used RMB>Curves>Post Extrapolation>Repeat to make that repeat infinitely.

Thanks, Robert. I've been trying but it's not working the way I envisioned it. I may revert to my plan for an animated decal. I'm hand-painting a lot of the elements so doing the decal makes sense.

What I did was decal a column with a diagonal striped image, bend the column into candy cane shapish thing, bone the candy cane, such that the bones are perpendicular to the plane of the spline rings, then constrain (in an action) the bones to roll like the base bone.

Brilliant, Nancy! I think that will work just fine!

That is a wonderful solution Nancy. I can see that being used for a lot of rotational things. (screws turning for instance)
Nice. Very nice.