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104 Chapter 11: Space Warps and Particle Systems
the travel direc tion (toward the target object). T he
vertices of the deformed object move until they
hit the target object.
There is also a Conform compound object (page
1–324) that prov ides additional methods of
conforming one object to another.
Conform viewport icon (a surface is below it)
Pr ocedur es
Ex ample: Using the Conform s pace war p:
Begin by making two objects.
1. Create a terrain by making a wide, flat b ox with
plent y of Length and Width seg ments (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 Seg ments in the cylinder to 4,and
position the cylinder to float over the ter rain.
4. Set the object color of the cylinder to contrast
w ith the color of the terrain.
5. Movethecylinderinsideonecornerofthe
terrain as seen from the Top viewport. Turn
on Animate, move to frame 100, and move t he
cylindertotheoppositecorneroftheterrain.
The coin/disk moves from one corner of the
terrain to the other.
The terrain will become the target object, and the
cylinder the deformed object. The n ex t step is to
create the Conform space warp and bind it to the
cylinder.
1. OntheCreatepanel,chooseSpaceWarps,
and then, from the drop-dow n 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 v iewport, drag the space warp up
until it’s above the cylinder.
As seen in the Front viewport, the terrain is at
the b ottom, the cy linder is b etween the terrain
and the space war p, and the space warp is at
the top.
5. Bind the sp ace warp to the c ylinder.
The cy linder becomes a disk that seems to b e
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 mig ht
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.