Unfolding an Audi

The idea for the creation of this animation came to me from a Motorola ad in which an apartment transforms into a cell phone. Any attempts to find detailed information about the production of the movie ended at best with a link to a SIDEFX webpage.

The pipeline for this tutorial (Maya (modeling) -> Max (cutting) -> Maya (animating) -> Max (rendering)) may seem a bit strange. This can be accomplished without using 3ds Max, if you do R&D, but for the purposes of this project, we will use everyday tools. There is a nice plugin called Deconstructor, which does what we need for this project, but it was created for use with 3ds Max only. In the process of working with Deconstructor, some problems were discovered. Before starting the cutting process, you need to use a modifier shell, otherwise some parts of the cut geometry will have “inappropriate internal” walls”

watch & read

Written by: Pradeep Mamgainis a VFX Educator at Frameboxx Animation and Visual Effects, Gurgaon Haryana, India. He writes Visual Effects, Post and Dynamics tutorials using various CG Packages. He is founder of the websites CGSutra.com and Aniquito.com.
Last revised by: Pradeep Mamgain on March 4, 2010.