Hi
I have a few animations that require animated booleans like parametric CAD tools allow.
So, I have a system of complex pipe works that include interior holes, bevels etc. I need to animate a pie slice opening up to show a 80 degree window into the interior and it needs to have zero artifacts during that animation.
With regular BMesh I found that “Difference” boolean left uncapped cuts. The only solution to fix that was to make sure the model was solid using remove doubles prior to boolean ops.
That almost works but leaves edge shading artifacts. Split edge modifier helps fix the shading but then you get the odd frame in the animated boolean that either creates an uncapped hole or the boolean simply has no effect on just one frame in the middle of the animation. Trying Carve instead of BMesh also had similar issues.
I know that apps like Solidworks can create perfect cross sectional bools but with polygons I find no client grade solution to this. Blender and 3DSMax exhibit the same poor results when trying to animate the bools.
I then tried “Bool tool” and shape booleans. Same issues.
I tried adjusting the density of both cutter and mesh which actually makes it more unpredictable.
Is there a boolean addon out there that uses a different system?
I suppose I could manually bool cut the mesh, create a duplicate, cut again etc and then use post to sequence the animation of about 60 frames but thats a lot work with no room for tweaks down the line.
Any help, hints or ideas would be welcome.