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Creating a Moving Laser that is Only as Long as the Distance Between it’s Source and the Irregular Surface
Hi Guys
I’m trying to figure out how to create a laser beam that extends from it’s source only to reach the surface it is moving over.
I need to have a mini sphere at the surface contact point which I will then simulate TurbulanceFD from.
I want to create a laser that generates turbulent voxel smoke upon contact with whichever surface it hits.
Ideally I want the laser to be a light, so it will show up through the TFD smoke without me having to adjust the light visibility settings.Cheers!
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7 Replies
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certainly impressive!
But the laser source needs to be the child of the laser projector which is on a moving robot arm.
At the moment the laser is at a fixed point.
The laser needs to be shining out of the projector on the robot arm, and the sphere needs to do what you have demonstrated here, but against whatever the robot arm pivots and aims towards.
Is that easily adjustable?
Thanks for your great effort!
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mine is somewhat different so I’ll include it too just to show there is usually more than one way 🙂
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Absolutely perfect, Brian!
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Hi Brian
I’ve tried applying your laser to my robot and unfortunately I’m not getting the desired result
The Ray Collision in Xpresso is showing up in yellow if that helps? What does that mean?
The Robot is sat within a spherical environment. I need it’s beam to create an ’emitter’ upon collision with the sphere environment’s surface. However, instead of an actual shape for the emitter, I’d like an area light to be there, shining back at the laser source, seemingly illuminating the robot from the laser’s collision point.
I’ve positioned the laser in the place I want, but I just cant achieve the same effect you did!
Would love to see how you’d fix this
Here’s the project file
8049_robot.c4d.zipCheers!
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well for the node stuff – from the Ray Collision Help
‘This node generates a ray and checks if and where it hits a polygon object. If you want the ray to collide with primitive a object or a Generator object, you must convert the object to polygons before using it with this node.’
your environment has to be made editable (that’s why the node is yellow – there are no polygons to check for)
also from the Ray Collision Help
‘Test Only
Enable this option if the only output port you are using is Collision. This will speed up the calculation of the node, because the other output ports will no longer be calculated.’
you are using the other ports (besides collision) so Test Only has to be turned off.
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Thanks Brian
All sorted now!
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