tanks, but no tanks

[robcat2075]

This is a great thread, Robert. Wonderfully innovative. Are you now using mtpeak2's expressions to drive the movement now, or are you still animating the material?

 

No, this is actually still the original animation but with the updated material substituted.

 

I was thinking of doing that with two treads, but then I thought I should add some wheels inside first , and then I thought I should add a body and then... well, thinking about it was as far as I got.

[animas3D]

This is an awesome tread... I mean thread. Could you give some indication how you made the materials. Is it mostly the gradient material moved around to different places?

 

By the way, I once heard that displacement bitmaps should be saved as EXR (32 bit floats per pixel). Would you confirm that?

[robcat2075]

This is an awesome tread... I mean thread. Could you give some indication how you made the materials. Is it mostly the gradient material moved around to different places?

 

The essential tread shape is a pattern made with the extended grid combiner, set to a cylindrical mode rather than a cubic one. Blur creates the gray slope between the highs and lows

 

By the way, I once heard that displacement bitmaps should be saved as EXR (32 bit floats per pixel). Would you confirm that?

 

Yes, if you are going to do large displacement. the 256 levels of 8-bit maps will show stair-stepping at large displacement %

 

Of course you have to find a way to create your map in more than 8 bits to begin with.

 

That's why i got on this displacement with materials thing. They are basically infinite in resolution and gradation.