Creating footsteps?

[FenrirWolf]

Hi. I've been trying to wrack my brain on a method for creating footsteps in a render I am doing. I want the footsteps to deform terrain, and on top of it, discolor the terrain. (Imagine a giant mech stepping on a road.) In other words, I want my model to leave behind deep, visible foot prints.

Anyone have any idea on how I accomplish this? One approach I was thinking of trying was to use a displacement texture map and then maybe slave the falloff value to my object -- but that doesn't seem very useful, especially if the target "walks" across multiple objects. It would also be hard to syncronize.

Another idea would be to pre-create the footsteps using endomorphs and then morph mix them in to follow the walking target. But that leaves the discolored terrain problem...

Any other ideas on how I could accomplish this? It's got me stumped!

[Skonk]

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=464&highlight=morph

This thread has an example i made for someone of this type of thing, basically what i did was make morph maps for each foot print and animated it with sliders(or morph mixer will do the same).

James..

[hunter]

Go to flay and search plugins for KO_Polyfit. It won't leave foot prints behind but maybe you can use the save transformed to create morph targets.
Also In the polk collection from worley labs there is a plugin called poke that will do it for you.
If you're like me and can't spend the money on polk there is one other way that I've used.
It takes awhile to set up but may work.
Build an object shaped like the footprint you want to use. Surface it as pure black.
Load your mech animation and load your new object. Clone it and key frame the clones to each footprint you want. Set up object dissolve envelopes so they appear when the foot steps down. Save your scene as footprints mask or whatever and remove everything but your new footprint objects.
Save the scene again.
Now set up your Camera so it is looking straight down on the scene and high enough to fit every foot print in frame. Set your camera to 512 x 512 or any perfect square (it helps if your land is square as well). The idea is to generate a displacement animation that will fit right on to your land to be displaced. Render the scene out against a white backdrop. Now you should have black footprints appearing over awhite backdrop.
load this as displacement map for your land object and scale it to fit. Copy this map and apply it to other objects and see if you can't get them to crush down.
I've not tried it but it works good for tire tracks.
Let me know if it works.

:rolleyes:

[marvin]

FenrirWolf

I think I've got it. It is simpler than you would have guessed. I haven't actually tried it, but it seems very reasonable.

Make two grounds, exactly the same except one has your footprints in it. Make sure they have the same texture, but the one with the footprints will have the diffferent colors where the footprints(fp) are. In a 2D paint program, make a white plane. This will be your clip map to be used on both objects.

To put it simply, move the clip map whenever the guy steps on the ground so the ground with the fp is revealed and the ground without the fp is hidden.

The only problem I can foresee is matching the footsteps to where your guy will actually step.

It seems logical in my head, but like I said before, I haven't tried it yet. Let me know if I didn't make sense somewhere or you just want more info on a step. When I've got time I'll try my little idea.

marvin

[HowardM]

hmm, wonder if using Motion Designer somehow could work!?
then it could be realistic mushy snow like footprints!

hmmmm.....

I remember a while ago I was playing with MD and PFXLinker...I took the simple LW scene of the cloth and ball...I added an emitter and then I linked 100 balls to shoot into the cloth...then I tweaked the cloth to be hard, and it ended up catching the balls and making snow like impressions.....I bet you could do this with your mechs feet!
Just need a FAST computer and patience with MDs horrible interface!

[FenrirWolf]

Thanks everybody, for the swift replies! :) All of you have given me lots of different ideas that I can try out. I will reply to this thread and follow up with what method works the best. (I have a feeling it's going to be a combination of several methods...)

Thanks again. :)

[HowardM]

I cant help myself!
:)

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1181

[Abigor]

just a thought. there is a plug in polk called acid i think, and wat you can do is basicaly paint on a surface with a control object. eg, paintbrush painting a line, or a foot leaving a footprint. i no this isnt exactly what your lookin for, but maybe it will help.