ZenPsycho

Thanks for the thought. I got sort of distracted by school starting again so I won't be able to implement this idea for a bit, but it's nice to have some things to try when I do get there.

Thank you, that actually helps a great deal. Though, any ideas on how to make the image display dependant on the object's rotation? That is, Even though the flat plane would always be facing the camera, I would produce a series of images for each view of a 3D object, and I would like the image selection relationships to be based on which image the camera should be seeing. I'm not sure I'm communicating that clearly enough, but it will have to do until I get some sleep. To be a bit more clear, this is for the hair of a character I'm modelling, and for stylistic purposes, the hair cannot be modelled in 3D, it must be drawn in 2D and placed behind the character's head, and the image of the hair swapped out depending on which angle the character is being viewed from. I'm sure there's some simple solution to this. I will try again using your advice, and perhaps I can find the solution on my own.

Okay I'm not sure how to communicate this without examples but I'll try. What I'd like to do, is have a group of flat 2D shapes, which are always shown frontwise like a sprite, so always facing the camera. However, I want the shapes to trade places with eachother, or animate depending on the angle the camera is looking at the object. Think of the game doom, and the 2D sprite characters drawn at all different angles. I was thinking though, that since my shapes are just monotone- just a single color.. I could do them as illustrator files, import them using AI wizard, put them into a single model, attach a bone which orients toward camera, and use smartskin the scale up the shape I want, and scale down the shapes I don't want depending on the angle of the bone. The problem I'm running into with that approach though, is that the angle of the bone with relation to the camera isn't activating my smartskin. What's more, from certain angles, the whole object rotates 180 degrees on the Z axis, which is not a behavior I desire. So, is there a way to do this with smart skin? Or possibly some other method I've overlooked?