Hi,
I am trying to make a scrolling text animation similar to this (see attachment)
I am thinking of defining a 2 dimentional array of spheres representing the billboard,
and a series of 2 dimentional arrays (5 by 7) of booleans defining each letters.
Then parse the input string to build the final array of materials…
How would you approach this ?
Any ideas/hints/tips greatelyu appreciated
write the text, convert to editable mesh and make scripted controller for every sphere with intersectray function (ray derived from sphere position and in case of need from rotation).
It might surprise you, but I wouldn’t use MAXScript at all.
Just create the text in photoshop or Max as white letters on black background and project using planar or whatever UVs onto the screen. Either create an array of spheres with the text material assigned in front of a black background, or if you prefer a 2D solution, use a mask with white dots in a matrix multiplied (using RGB Multiply) by the white text. Then animate the U offset of the text map to scroll the text if you want. You can place the text map in the self-illum slot or just in the diffuse and bump up the self-illum. amount to 100.
Creating thousands of materials, one for each sphere, would be a nightmare and really slow. Use mapping when possible.
You could also use a PFlow particle system with a Scripted Test or a Box #3 DataFlow operator which queries a pixel in a control bitmap and sends particles to two events – one with bright particles and one with dark ones…