Inflate/Deflate

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 3:03 am

I'm new so this may be a dumb idea but I'll risk it.

As I was going through the help file I was thinking it would be cool to be able to create a 'inflate/deflate' object 'inside' shapes; this would not be rendered but could be used to deform a shape.

For example you show how to create crowds of people using one character but imagine I put a 'inflate/deflate' object in the area where thier stomach, breasts and buttocks would be and could set a size variation; some of the characters would have their bellies strethced etc...

Or imagine you put one of these where the biceps would be and inflate/deflate when arm moves to make a muscle. You could use a few in a tire or other object to over inflate them, puff up balloons, create bumps on a characters head, raise hills, get pregnant etc

What I am visualizing is something that you can set the angle of effect -like the particles, so that at 360 it grows evenly from the center but at 45 it grows from the base outward. I know you can do this by dragging the outlines over time but it might be useful for some animations.

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:49 pm

That sounds exactely like the program Poser. There you have 3D (human) models with many numerical parameters (chest size, nose size, fat/skinny, you name it). I can't think of a simple solution to put that in Moho right away, maybe one of the Lua programmer could think of a way to incorporate it.

For a less flexible method you can use the Magnet tool in version 5, not so precise but it's not bad for some effects.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:35 pm

The problem I see is that, while it might be viable in 3D, it would likely be kind of a problem in 2D, or at least Moho's point/curve model. For myself, most of my characters a pretty complex, and I often spend more time tweaking a few points to get everything to move right that I did drawing them in the first place. Anything that did something random to the shapes would almost certainly bollocks things up completely. But that's just me. Might be viable for simpler drawings. It probably wouldn't be all that hard to do, but you would have to use something that would distibute copies of the modified characters as opposed the particle system method. For that matter, if you did it that way, you might throw in a random assignment of different actions and vary some colors to really break things up. Might look into some of it in the future.

--Brian

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:53 pm

...while it might be viable in 3D, it would likely be kind of a problem in 2D, or at least Moho's point/curve model.

Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem. I may peek at some of this a few months down the road when I get the basics and some coding under my belt. I was checking out some similar mechanical effects at http://www.digitalcarversguild.com with thier Cognito plugin (for 3D) and I was thinking this concept might be cool as well.

Back to the tutorial corner for me.