Build Effect- snow and such?

Support Basics & Interface
1

what can we use the “build” effect for? I was curious of all the wonderful ways of this option (if any) that can be used… being that I never quite understood it, I’d like to know…
Thanks in advance
DMBadCat 8)

2

it animates the creation of an object
kinda

it will make the faces appear in the order they are in the object. You can control it to goes backwards with the speed (or is it time?) ipo

for snow? If your snow was a number of layers of planes the build effect and tweaking of whatever ipo I mean would allow you to animate rising and lowering of the snow.

but it would probably be easier with [relative] vertex keys and having your snow sink under the ground and environment.

cool use of the build effect:
look at it on a uv sphere. (default values are fine)
and an icosphere (higher subdivisons are more interesting)
and a grid
and a subdivided plane

… different functions order faces differently, when using the build function how an object is make needs to be a consideration.

3

hmm, i’ll hafta try that…

4

Here’s a build effect for UVSpheres:

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/blender/files/BuildSphere.blend

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/blender/files/BuildSphere2.blend

You might use something like that for that “armour effect” done in the final episode of Star Trek Voyager.

5

but I don’t understand “how” you get those kind of effects!

6

It’s fairly straight forward.

Add your object.
Add a ‘build’ effect in the animation buttons window [F7].
Set the length and start parameters.

That gives you the default build.
Ctrl_f in object mode will do a z_sort on the faces.
for the random / checker effects, I carefully ‘split’ [y] out the faces to affect their order.

7

straight forward you say? that’ll take forever!

EDIT: but I guess that’s how it goes, thank you for sharing, and i guess I’ll use that at some point

8

If you want the faces to appear randomly, use the ‘Hash’ button on your mesh (in EditButtons).

9

cool stuff… thank you guys!

10

I don’t believe ‘Hash’ will work in tandem with the ‘Build’ effect for a truly random appearance of the faces, but perhaps I’m doing something wrong. I just tried it and with the build effect, the faces still seem to pretty much appear in the default pattern. Could you describe how you managed to get a random build of the faces using ‘Hash’.

Thanks, I really appreciate the help.

11

well how did you get the random pattern?

12

Edit mode with all vertices unselected.

Circular select (B,B - press B twice).
Select here and there. Vary the circular selecter size a bit, (numpad +/-)
Split [Y]
unselect all [A]
repeat lots of times

Activate Build effect.

13

mm… well thank you all for replying to my thread… now maybe I might be able to do somethin with it!

14

I don’t believe ‘Hash’ will work in tandem with the ‘Build’ effect for a truly random appearance of the faces, but perhaps I’m doing something wrong.[/quote]
No you’re quite correct. Sorry, I was getting mixed up with randomising the vertices that particles appear at. Silly me!

15

(particles…) that’ll come in handy, thanks 'gain!