Hi folks,

I’m pretty new to Max and this site, so this will probably be simple for most on here!

Most of the animations i’m trying to produce involve tools where most of the workings are internal, due to this i need to create a few section cuts. What i think is pretty important to highlight in the animation is that the cut faces be a different colour from the outer part to clearly show how it works.

The first cut effect I managed to do myself where i used the slice modifier with remove top or bottom and then the cap holes modifier, then changed the Material ID of the cut faces and attached a Multi/Sub Object Material. This worked perfectly if i animate the slice plane moving into the part.

However what i’m trying to do now is make half of the model fade to translucent, leaving the other half, and a different coloured cut face. On testing i created a cylinder and using much the same method as above, set half of the model to 1 Mat ID and the other half to another ID, then set the opacity to 0% at a certain keyframe.
This also worked fine but you can’t use the cap holes modifier to create the cut face or change the colour.

Anybody have any ideas? i know it’s possible as i’ve seen it on other animations!

Thanks in advance!

Create the main object with the Slice “A” and the Slice Plane’s animation, clone it as a copy “B” but change the Slice from Top to Bottom. What you will get is the “B” object replacing the “A” object over time. “A” has has your materials (as you explained above), “B” fwould have a single material with a Gradient Map in the Opacity Slot. Add a UVWMap modifier, animate the Gizmo position to match that of the Slice Planes.

Because you want to see the “cap colour” you’ll want to alter the colours of the gradient so that it’s never 100% opaque. You could also use a custom bitmap if you prefer.

May not be perfect but should give you some ideas.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Cheers Steve,

I’ll give it a bash later and see how it goes.
Sounds like it could be a complicated effect to do if there’s lots of parts in the scene!