Homeworld-style Hyperspace in 3ds Max

Lord Overmind

For those who have played the game will understand this. I am looking to make a series of Homeworld-based animations. However, I want to implement the hyperspace effect as seen in the game. Material-wise, I can figure it out, but how to I make the geometry vanish as the "Gateway passes over the ship? Slice modifiers wouldn't do me any good, but any words of wisdom will.

Melak

an easy way would be to apply a planar uv map to your object from the side, in a separate map channel, and animate a gradient in that channel, then use this map as an opacity map for the material of your object.

If you have a lot of different materials you could try putting them in a multi-subobject material, and adding your opacity mat on top of that overriding the others.

Melak

As for achieving the glowing backside, you could try to use an ambient occlusion shader for the opacity in the hyperspace gate's material, like so: (shield effect test I did)

Only the majority of the effect would (should) be on the inside of the ship
Although I don't know if this will work with a transparent object or not, if it doesn't you could make a non transparent but invisible to the camera clone of your ship that the AO shader can see.


Edit: also instead of animating the gradient, don't collapse the planar mapping modifier, and animate the position of the gizmo with your hyperspace gate, or even link it's position to that.

Edit2: Works better than I expected:

Lord Overmind

Your words of wistom worked. I obtained a near-similar result, but with the animation, I implemented an Ambient Occlusion shader to the self-illumination map. This makes a much brighter view of the hyperspace cutaway. Also, here's a test video I rendered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pobm_ok1CGI

Melak

Messing around with that shield effect proved useful after all. Glad I could help

InfinitySquared

Woah! Awesomeness! Mind if we can have the material?

Melak

Nothing much to it, one white, non reflective Arch&Design material, with self illumination turned on and a blueish color, and an Ambient Occlusion map in the Cutout (opacity) slot:


In the AO map itself, make the "Dark" color white, and the "Bright" color a ~0.1 ish gray. Tweak the samples as needed: