linking movement to light

# 1 22-05-2008 , 02:11 PM

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Join Date: Oct 2007

Posts: 19

Hello everyone

I am working on an interactive light installation in shape of a wall covered by a energy gathering technology called Piezo Electronics. Before i build it in the real world i want to make it in Maya.

I have made the wall full of flaps and connected it to an air field. The idea is that whenever one of the flaps gets moved by the air field a small ball will light up on the other side. I have thought about faking it by key framing the lights, but since there are 7 walls and each has about 500 flaps, that would take about a month, which i don't have.

So what i need is to connect a polygonal object to a light ball, so that whenever it moves the light will flash. I know a bit of java scripting but i have never used mel scripts before so i really have no clue on how to make this or if it is possible at all.
user added image

Any help on this subject would be much appreciated !

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# 2 22-05-2008 , 05:48 PM

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Join Date: Jan 2005

Location: Livingston, Scotland

Posts: 1,701

This should be totaly possible with MEL, and if not you maybe able to user python if your using Maya 2008. MEL in itself is totaly powerful and most of the Maya Application is written in MEL.

I would suggest that the way it should work is it looks at the vertices on the cloth and checks it Y axis and as it goes up in Y the light gets brighter, this should be able to be applied to the scene and then allowing the dynamic simulation to run shuld give you the results you are looking for.

I am no MEL scripter, but there are a few in here who are quite good with the language. If you have done Javascript then MEL should not be a problem for you.

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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# 3 22-05-2008 , 07:09 PM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

Depending on the version of maya your suing you could use the closest point on mesh or the closest point on surface to do the collisions.

open the script editor and go to help -> mel command refrence and search thatfor the flags as its up to you what you want it to do.

Also put history echo all commands on so the script editor displays everything thatyou do so you get a grasp of the commands and how maya uses them

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 4 01-06-2008 , 03:43 AM

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Join Date: Oct 2007

Posts: 19

thanks for your thoughts they have been helpfull user added image

, but the project have changed a bit since i last posted this thread.

We are no longer working with flaps but propellers. So what i need to make the script do, is to analyze how fast the propellers are rotating and make the spheres glow acordingly.

I have been trying to figgure out what kind og command i need to use in order to capure the rotation speed and also how to specify the glow attr on the shader, but it is really confusing ! user added image

any help on this would be much appriciated :bow:

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linking movement to light

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