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Cutting a shape out of an object using a spline
Hi, I have been trying to figure this out for a while now and I just can’t. I am making an intro vid for a group of people I play video games with online and I really have a good idea about what I’d like to do.
Basically, I want to have a plane laying on the ground (it’s actually rectangle spline inside an extrude nurbs object, but same diff, right?). I have a “laser” that I’ve made that spells out the word on the plane, and when it’s done, I want to have a machine come in and lift away the cut-out word from the plane and have the camera center on it and lights shine down. The problem is, I can’t figure out how to actually cut out the word from the plane.
I know this is probably really confusing, so here is a video I made of the laser etching my (abbreviated) nickname into the plane:
https://infectionist.com/movies/Laser3.wmv (11 seconds, 1280×800)
It’s not done by any means, it was just a test. I will eventually build a machanism that moves the laser housing back and forth on the rods, and make the laser not jump between letters but slide along from one to the next. There’s also one other thing I need to get fixed, but I’ll work on that when I’m done with this part.
So, can anyone help me? How would I cut the shape of the word I’m cutting out from the plane itself. I can live with having the word and the plane seperate, but since they’re together you can’t tell, but I only know how to extrude the words to make them 3D, I don’t know how to subtract those letters from the plane itself.
I’m sorry if I’m still being unclear, just let me know, I can try to photoshop a quick example picture together.
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3 Replies
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use the word as the alpha channel then duplicate it and invert the alpha for your background.
Another option is talked about in this thread here:
https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=35573&hl=colibert/randy
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You can either do it by connecting the text and rectangle splines and extruding the result, or you by using a boolean. If you have MoGraph you could also use the spline mask object to boolean the splines before extruding.
Example file: https://www.3danvil.com/temp/letter%20cutout.c4d
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Hey, I figured it out. Funny I’ve been trying this for weeks now and I finally decided to ask for help and I figure it out. I just created the 2 plines, placed them where I wanted them, made them editable, and Functions > Connected them and extruded the result. I do have MoGraph, but this is easier. To make it look like one flat piece of metal, I just took the text spline and extruded it seperately the exact same amount til they were flush. Thank you for your help, it is appreciated!
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