Rope material for noose

[SplineSoup]

Howdy all!

 

I'm looking for a good way to create an animatable hangman's noose for an upcoming project, but am stumping myself with how to texture the rope, ideally with some displacement to indicate the twisting structure. Either a procedural or image map solution would be fine, I think. Any tips or pointers to existing work that I can pick apart would be greatly appreciated!

 

Chris

[robcat2075]

Hey, I like your avatar! i got out my 3D glasses to look at it.

 

 

Here is a bump map I have used for rope purposes. It tiles perfectly in Photoshop but not quite right in A:M for reasons I'm not sure of.

 

if you have trouble using it come back and we'll figure it out.

 

RopeMap.tga

[SplineSoup]

Thanks! I created the avatar while demoing stereo 3D principles for a group of students a few years back while taking a hiatus from A:M. Oddly, while much of my A:M program knowledge has leaked out of my ears in this interim period, I still seem to remember all of the keyboard shortcuts I used.

The texture map works well mapped to a cylinder and appears to be seamless from all sides. At this point though, I've run into the limits of my materials recollection. I have tried mapping the texture using both projection and environment mapping, but get weird results on everything but a basic cylinder. My inclination was that decalling is the wrong way to apply such a regular texture but the Technical Reference (p70 "Add Image...") is leading me to suspect otherwise. What method might suit this challenge best?

 

Appreciated,

Chris

 

 

[robcat2075]

"Add Image" will tile a copy of the bitmap onto every patch. This is the most likely (only) gambit if you are modeling the rope in noose shape at the outset.

 

Cylindrical decaling can work if you start with a pure cylinder in the model window, decal the image onto it, THEN bend the cylinder into your noose shape.

[Rodney]

I know you are after a material here but just in case it's an option...

 

You could model the rope using the Sweeper plugin.

Then you can basically create any path and have the rope follow that pattern (to include real knots etc.)

[John Bigboote]

There is also the Darktree 'simple rope' and 'rope pot' (whatever that is...) material that makes a nice rope texture.

[SplineSoup]

Good information, all of this! I'll take a closer look into the DarkTree material plug-ins as I reacclimate to A:M in the coming months, as they seem to contain a wealth of possibilities for adding low-CP details. I went ahead and tried Rodney's suggestion to try the Sweeper wizard and found that it both simplified the creation of the noose knot and resulted in a satisfying texture when rendered with the toon shader, which I'll be using extensively for this project. Thanks for the excellent options! I am impressed by how quickly this came to a good result!

 

Best,

Chris

 

[Rodney]

Nicely done!

 

It looks like you've already got the feel for use of Sweeper plugin. I'm impressed.

It doesn't look like you needed it but I should have mentioned that after creating the path it can be advantageous to use the ResampleSpline plugin to get a path with Control Points evenly spaced. This helps also if telling Sweeper to create a repeated shape/extrusion at each CP. As I say... doesn't look like you needed that.

[Fuchur]

Sweeper can do that by itself... have a look at the options if you use a specific number of duplicates, etc. .

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[Rodney]

Sweeper can do that by itself... have a look at the options if you use a specific number of duplicates, etc.

 

Yes, but the issue at that point is that we can't adjust any of those distances individually (via Sweeper). With Sweepers setting it's an all or nothing approach.

Resampling the spline allows for the creation of same distances with the option to tweak any of those sections as needed for final placement of copies/extrusions by Sweeper.

With the basic shape (and placement of sections) preplanned and then created via Sweeper additional adjustment of the CPs can refine the mesh further although we were dealing with a lot fewer CPs.

This can be especially useful in areas where we know we will need additional deformation.

 

Both approaches will work but the resampling of the spline allows for greater refinement of the initial results (as produced Sweeper). It can only produce what we tell it to.

In the case of a rope think in terms of squash and stretch between certain lengths of the rope and that's a primary advantage of the resampling approach.

 

And... besides all that... I'm plugging the ResampleSpline wizard because it's good practice to create patches that are roughly the same size throughout a model as that will be useful in other cases besides this one. The ResampleSpline plugin helps us do that.

[John Bigboote]

Good-looking NOOSE! I am always surprised and a little nervous when I see how well our forum makes weapons!

[SplineSoup]

Good-looking NOOSE! I am always surprised and a little nervous when I see how well our forum makes weapons!

 

Maybe that could be a future mascot competition for Animation:Master. Call it "Weapons with Personality" or something like that.

 

 

But actually, this noose is a key prop in a short animated adaptation of "A Ballade of Suicide" based on the poem by G.K. Chesterton. I'm creating the first promo image for it and will post it here when completed.