mesh color by offset / elevation

[LyleHardin]

We've scanned a wall. An engineer wants to show how much and where the wall may be bulging.

I can get a mesh of the wall into Max.

How might I go about showing a colorized contour map indicating how far parts of the mesh (wall) is from a perfectly flat wall?

Perhaps color verticies or faces by X or Y values?

Is there already some modifier available for this?

Years ago I used the Terrain object for civil terrain objects, but is there something similar for vertical objects?

Thinking about it, I guess I could rotate my model 90 degrees and lay my wall on the ground, then make a terrain object from it, but I'd rather keep things real world if possible.

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

I guess Data Channel modifier could do it. But I don't know it enough to give the exact steps. This is simply a quick draft and probably not the necessary one as it picks also the corners.

Also perhaps generating a displacement map where we include the wall with offset as high poly and as low poly the wall straight. The displacement map would capture the difference between both. This map could be used as color texture for the tilted wall, and even including color with a color ramp layer in Photoshop.

It could be also interesting a slice animated showing the part that is offset

[Anonymous]

This is with the system of displacement but obviously you need to deal with generating a displacement and changing the color with a color gradient adjustment layer

[Anonymous]

. 

[miketruly]

If it's a flat wall with a bulge, and you're only concerned with the outside of the wall, planar mapping a gradient ramp may do the trick:

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

That solution seems the best if the wall has not corners

[LyleHardin]

Thanks for the responses!

I've finally gotten back to this. I think this will do what I want,  but I'm currently having a tough time figuring it out. I've not delved into materials that much...

I guess I need to apply a planar UVW map, uncheck 'real world', Fit the alignment to X, Y, or Z.

It looks like the gradient only appears on a render. This is what I get. 

I've tried aligning and fitting to X, Y, and Z but I can't get the gradient to go the way I want it to.

[Anonymous]

Take a look to this MAX file example attached and let me know if you don't understand anything or it is different to what you need

[LyleHardin]

Thanks for the file. It looks like I did everything right, but I had to rotate my UVW MAP Gizmo. That's why my gradient was going the wrong way. 

BTW, good job mimicking my wall!