Posted by Dave Lock on July 26, 2001 at 23:23:10:In Reply to: Lathe simulation posted by Hamur on July 26, 2001 at 09:41:34:
This answer is probably going to widen the options rather than narrow them for you, but I'll give it anyway.
I'm assuming when you say lathe that you mean a wood lathe or metal lathe (not the lathe modifier), & I give these answers not knowing your Max skill level (email me if you have problems).1. The most difficult but most technically correct way to do it (if there is such a thing) is to have a tube outside a cylinder. Then control the animation of the material being cut off the tube with a particle system. With a bit of fiddling you could even make the schwarf bit of metal twist and change colour with age as they come off.
2. Another way is to still use your boolean subtract method, but animate the movement of an invisible (to the camera) tube along the cylinder so it appears to be removing the material. Not as visually effective.
3. Yet another way is by pure deceit. Apply a displacement map to the outside of the cylinder you are machining, and animate that map in sync with the tool cutter. This way, the material doesn't have to be removed because it was never there, just a displacement illusion. Getting the sync'ing right may be a bit of a fiddle, but you can get plug-ins such as Chameleon, that wires map animation to an object, so you could parameter wire the displacement map to the tool cutter, thus automatically sync'ing it for you.
There are other options as well, but they either get a bit difficult to explain in a summary form, or are not worth mentioning because they are too clumsy.
Hope this helps.
D.L.