[starbug]

Hi guys, i am trying to make and space battle animation in 3ds max 2011 and i have encountered a small problem. The scene i am trying to shoot is that a Orion warps in to attack a Moloch. The problem is that i cannot seem to make the Orion invisible just before it warps in. I was originally told to right click on the model, select object proprieties then set the visibility to 0.0 in the rendering controls. Then make a keyframe. Once that was done, go to the next frame and then set the visibility to 1.0 and set keyframe.

The problem i have when doing this, as soon as i set the visibility back to 1.0, it resets the previous frames which where at 0 back to 1, so the ship is visible in all frames. I am doing something wrong or did my tutor give me the wrong info?

[Rodo]

That's not gonna help since you need your ship appearing after coming through the jump effect, the method you are trying to use now will make they ship pop into existence as a hole when a certain keyframe is reached.

What you may need is to use a position keyframe and make the textures visible after they pass that point, though I'm not sure that's actually doable since I've never used 3ds.

[zookeeper]

At least one way would be to use an animated boolean. Create a box inside which the ship resides before warpin, create a boolean which subtracts the box from the ship, then animate the ship operand to gradually move out of the box.

[mjn.mixael]

well, you could try to actually create a clipping plane if some sort using these methods. however, I prefer the much simpler method of setting up my camera angle in such a way that you can't see the ship behind the portal.

Then you simply move the ship through the portal and use some bloom. then go to the ships first key frame, go back one more frame and move the ship far out of view.

[bobbtmann]

That's a neat trick, zookeeper. I'll have to try that.

starbug: Have yo tried looking at what you've got in your track view? It might illuminate what's going on. It's possible that the orion starts becoming visible at time=0, and becomes fully visible at after it jumps in.