laser cut animation

[KingVidiot]

Hey guys,

 

I want to do something similar to this old Continuums open credit animation. The material and particle FX should be straightforward, but the cutting aspect might be difficult. I'm not a super power user.

 

It looks like the pre-made text fades in so that is not so bad, but what is the best way to make the beam trace out the letters to fake the "cutting"? I'm going to simulate an actual CO2 laser cutting steel and using the red reference beam. The laser will be in some sort of a gimbal apparatus.

 

I can't find any decent tutorials on the techniques.

 

Thanks ahead of time...

 

ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/movies/continuums.mov

 

 

[pixelplucker]

I can't see or download the mov

[robcat2075]

I can download it but QuickTime wont' open it.

[KingVidiot]

Thanks for checking.

You might have to use VLC. The old Quicktime codecs are funky.

QT 7.7.9 on Win 7 opens it fine. Many of my old QTs (from the 90s) don't open on my modern Mac. I had to convert them.

 

The video was uploaded by Hash on the FTP site from the year 2000. :-)

[robcat2075]

Thanks for checking.

You might have to use VLC.

 

 

OK, NOW I see it!

 

I remember that one!

 

The "beam" is probably a thin cylinder with a bone at each end. The bone at the letter end is on a path constraint, using the spline at the edge of the letter as a "path". A new path constraint is probably used for each letter.

 

If you wanted to bring this to Live Answer Time we could rough it out.

[KingVidiot]

Cool, thanks man. :-)