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100 Chapter 11: Space Warps and Particle Systems
the travel direction (toward the target object). The
vertices of the deformed object move until they
hit t he target object.
There is also a
Conform compound object (page
1–319)
that provides additional methods of
conforming one object to another.
Conform viewport icon (a surface is below it)
Pr ocedur es
Ex ample: Us ing the Confor m space wa rp:
Begin by making two objects.
1. Create a terrain by making a wide, flat box w ith
plenty of Leng th and Width segments (or a
quad patch). Apply a Noise modifier and adjust
its parameters to result in a bumpy terrain (not
mountainous, but low and irregular).
2. Create a short, wide cylinder whose radius
is about one-eighth the area of the box (like
a coin). You’ll animate the cylinder to float
diagonally over the surface of the terrain.
3. Set Cap Segments in the cylinder to 4,and
position the cylinder to float over the terrain.
4. Set the object color of t he cylinder to contrast
w ith the color of the terrain.
5. Movethecylinderinsideonecornerofthe
terrain as seen from the Top viewport. Turn
on Animate, move to fr ame 100, and move the
cylindertotheoppositecorneroftheterrain.
The coin/disk moves from one corner of the
terrain to the other.
The terrain will become the t arget object, and the
cylinder the deformed object. The next step is to
create the Conform space warp and bind it to the
cylinder.
1. OntheCreatepanel,chooseSpaceWarps,
and then, from the drop-down list, choose
Geometric/Deformable. Click the Conform
button.
2. In the Top viewport, in the center of the terrain,
drag outward to create the Conform space
warp.
3. Click the Pick Object button, and then click the
terrain box.
4. In the Front viewpor t, drag the space warp up
until it’s above the cylinder.
As seen in the Front viewport, the terrain is at
the bottom, the c ylinder is between the terrain
and the sp ace w arp, and the space warp is at
the top.
5. Bind the space warp to the cylinder.
The cylinder becomes a disk that seems to be
painted on the surface of the terrain.
6. Dragthetimeslidertoseethecylinder/disk
moveacrossthebox,followingtheterrain.
Because the vertices are pushed almost to the level
of the terrain, the faces of the two object m ight
intersect. In the following steps, you’ll fix this by
adjusting the standoff distance between the target
surface and the pushed vertices. Then you’ll go on
to affect only selected vertices in the cylinder.
1. SelecttheConformspacewarp,andopenthe
Modify panel.
2. Set Standoff Distance to 3.
You can now clearly see the surface of the disk
above the terrain.
3. Set the Standoff Distance to 20 .