Hi,
after working here and there with ICE for particles and deformations I'm trying to do something with kinematics now.
Unfortunatly I don't seem to get the whole point. I'm having trouble with this particular tree which is included for a while now and I just don't seem to get the whole point.
So I thought maybe some of you could have a look over it and could maybe help me?
The Scene includes 4 Objects:
- A Null "Rig" which has the ICE Tree
- A Polymesh "Character" (shown purple in the Screenshot)
- A Polymesh "blobShadow" (shown green in the Screenshot)
- A Polymesh "Floor"
All the objects are frozen and have zerod-out
My aim was to simulate a simple blob-shadow-technique as it could be used in video games.
The point normals of "character" are projected onto "floor". An Average of the resulting points (in this case 4 as "character" has 4 vertices) is calculated
and "blobShadow" is placed where this average is. So far so good, if I am moving character (or moving the points) the shadow-object moves along the floor under it.
With the nodes in the middle of the ICE Tree I'm trying to get the ponit normal on the location of "floor" which is nearest to "average" and rotate the shadow-plane correspondently.
I have the following problems/questions:
1.) As soon as i plug in the PointNormal in the tree (marked "B" in the screenshot of the tree included) instead of the vector constant the shadow-object moves to 0,0,0.
The yellow debug Null ("A" in the tree) is on a complete different location on the floor.
2.)If I plug the vector constant back in (replacing the PointNormal) I still see the yellow debug null ("A") and it moves if I move the points of the "chacter"-mesh, but it seems to have some kind of offset..
3.)Completly no sense for me makes the following: If i plug in the vector constant again ("B") and rotate the shadow-object with this setup (by giving different values then <0,0,0> for the vector constant, the yellow debug null rotates with it.
Can anyone explain me why this is happening? This is an "dead end" of the tree and in my opinion shouldn't even be calculated, but even if, there should be no connection betwen this debug value and the rotate vector. (?)
I would be very happy if anyone coud give me a glue what could be the problem, as I'm struggeling with this simple task for a while now...
Thanks,
Raschko