Face Camera

[MGebhart]

Hi guys and dolls,

Is there a function to have specific object geometry to Face Camera no mater if you rotate or move.

Example: A tree has leaf geometry and fruit geometry. I would like the fruit geometry to always face the camera.

Hope this is clear.

Marc

[Tangled-Universe]

This sounds like the geometry has to change when moving the camera. TG2 is not able to modify geometry in this way.
A complicated way is too generate the tree twice, one is the tree with leafs and the second is the fruit-geometry only.
Set both up as populations with same area-size, seed and pop density etc.

In the animation parameters you could animate the rotation of the object-maker of the fruit-geometry population.
Make the rotation similar to the rotation of the camera. Given/assumed that you want the orientation the same, otherwise a simple modification of the rotation is required.

That's all I can think of so far...

Martin

[Tangled-Universe]

Never mind, that's not going to work either, because the fruits as a whole will be rotated, not individually.

[MGebhart]

I'm wondering if I copy the fruit component and place it in the same location as the first then rotate on the z 45 degrees. This is done sometimes to fake 3d using planes. You often see this technique in video games.

I'll give it a shot.

Marc

[Oshyan]

It sounds like you want something similar to billboard functionality. TG2 doesn't do that yet. I'm wondering what the purpose is though. If you're trying to save on geometry, you might find an image-based approach takes as long or more to render and has lower quality anyway...

- Oshyan