Animate an Extrude

	Animate an Extruded Surface Back I am creating this tutorial because I recently had to animate a road growing in front of a car. I remembered back in the School of Visual Arts we had covered this, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember. Then finally, it hit me! So it's a quick little tutorial, let's jump in... First you want to create a curve on which the extrude will happen. I used the CV Curve tool. Go into the side orthographic window and lay out the CV's. When you are done, hit enter. For this example, I am writing my name, Chris, as if my character was writing it out. Then you need to create a curve to reflect the shape of the extrude. For this example, I am using a circle, to make the extrude round. Now curve snap (C + MMB) the circle to the beginning of the curve. Make sure you rotate the circle so that it has its opening along the "Chris" curve so that it can slide thru it, from the beginning to end. Now, open the Extrude Option Box as shown in image 1-3, and make sure the partial button is selected in the curve range section. Press Apply, and you should see similar to image 1-4. Now you will have 3 INPUTS in the channels box, extrude1, subCurve1, and subCurve2. Extrude 1 allows you to extrude type and such. What we will be working with is the subCurve's. subCurve2 is what we will be animating along the curve "Chris". subCurve1 adjusts the NURBS circle. subCurve2 has an attribute Max Value. This is what you want to set a key on. A value of 1 is fully extruded, while 0 is not extruded at all. This value will give you an error message, so make sure you start with a value of .0001 if you need to start at the beginning. You can animate the visibilty of the shader if the remaining piece of Geo is a problem. Here I set a value of .001 at the first frame and then a value of 1 at frame 48. Play the animation below... And thats it! Easy enough. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line. Back Tutorials Links Prop Shop Acme Images

Animate an Extruded Surface Back

I am creating this tutorial because I recently had to animate a road growing in front of a car. I remembered back in the School of Visual Arts we had covered this, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember. Then finally, it hit me! So it's a quick little tutorial, let's jump in...

First you want to create a curve on which the extrude will happen. I used the CV Curve tool. Go into the side orthographic window and lay out the CV's. When you are done, hit enter. For this example, I am writing my name, Chris, as if my character was writing it out.

Then you need to create a curve to reflect the shape of the extrude. For this example, I am using a circle, to make the extrude round. Now curve snap (C + MMB) the circle to the beginning of the curve. Make sure you rotate the circle so that it has its opening along the "Chris" curve so that it can slide thru it, from the beginning to end.

Now, open the Extrude Option Box as shown in image 1-3, and make sure the partial button is selected in the curve range section. Press Apply, and you should see similar to image 1-4.

Now you will have 3 INPUTS in the channels box, extrude1, subCurve1, and subCurve2. Extrude 1 allows you to extrude type and such. What we will be working with is the subCurve's. subCurve2 is what we will be animating along the curve "Chris". subCurve1 adjusts the NURBS circle.

subCurve2 has an attribute Max Value. This is what you want to set a key on. A value of 1 is fully extruded, while 0 is not extruded at all. This value will give you an error message, so make sure you start with a value of .0001 if you need to start at the beginning. You can animate the visibilty of the shader if the remaining piece of Geo is a problem. Here I set a value of .001 at the first frame and then a value of 1 at frame 48. Play the animation below...

And thats it! Easy enough. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line.

Back