I saw somewhere… on some site, at some place, at one point… somebody made an animations, with a tire leaving it’s tread in the ground… it obviously had the blender particle system, because they had that follow the tire, but how do you put treads in the snow, in an animation, only when the tire touches it? just curious… DMBadCat
sorry that I can’t provide the link, but I don’t knw where the site is…
I’ve never used this myself, but maybe it’s to do with the boolean function?
YES YES! that was the site! it has the animation… but it lacks the tutorial on how to make the treads! STEFANO! HELP!
I guess S68 never found the time to write a tutorial.
Here’s the thread where he drops a few hints:
but but but!!! 
you said “soon” and “really”!!!
ACK! 
[>] [!]
Making threads in snow actually is quite easy if you use the build effect from your other topic.
Here’s a mini tut.
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Model a 3D foot print (not only a plane) and the ground (i. e. a plane).
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Assign the same material to the footprint and the ground. Now, make the footprint material single user (you’ll need all the same settings except for one)
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make several copies of the footprint, mirror the half of them and place them right above the ground.
(Alternativaly you could use a path with dupliframes and converting the dupliframes to real) -
Assign a built effect with Len: 1 to each footprint, and set the Sfra: differnt for each footprint ( something like an offset of 15 frames: footprint 1 Sfra: 1, footprint 2 Sfra: 16 etc.)
If you render this animation the footpints will appear one after the other.
The footprints will appear raised (as expected because they are 3D and above the ground)
- To make them look engraved turn the ZInvert option in the material buttons on.
That’s it.
For any object that will cover the footprints turn Ztrans on.
Threads of wheels can be made in a similar way except you model the whole thread and assign a single built effect with the lenght of the animation.
(Best way to model the thread is to make a short characteristic part, make this child of a path, dupliframes on, convert dupliframes to real and join the "real dupliframes)
hmm, is there an easier way? a more realistic way? because s68 didn’t look like he did that… it looked real… I’ll try that, and thanks for sharing… I’m just wondering if stefano will ever get around to reading this post! anyway… thanks for the replies guys… I’m going to just hafta find a way to make foot prints, wether it be easy or hard…
tordat:
nice idea, I don’t know if it works because I haven’t done like that…
cat
I’m afraid my method is more complex than tordat’s 
Anyway, here’s the TUT
http://www.selleri.org/Blender/tuts/Tracks.pdf
Still unfinished as for november 2002… and only footsteps, but since you need it 
Stefano
It does, though it may not be a general solution in any case.