Blender intersect?

[amism]

Hi, everybody!
I am trying to really get started with Blender, and I was wondering if there is a function in Blender similar to POVRay's boolean "Intersect". I would like to be able to animate the two parts of the intersect separately.

[pgsmedia]

I've no experience with POVray, but I do know a thing or 2 about blender.

select the 2 objects to intersect and hit the 'W' key. that will bring the boolean menu under your cursor.

Alternatively, you could use the 'modifiers' palette to place a bool modifier on the object.

all of the bool operators will result in 3 objects: the original 2 objects, and the 3rd result object.

Does that help at all?
Also, I have a compiled help doc for blender, if you want it.

[amism]

actually, I want to animate an abstract shape moving through another abstract shape, and I only want rendered what intersects at a given frame. is there a way of binding objects or something?

[agentxi]

actually something like that could probably be done through post effects, using masks to cut out the part that you do not want.

You render all your elements in layers, and in a compositing program you can make alpha masks to get rid of the parts you do not want shown in your render.

can you post a test render to show us what you are trying to do?

[amism]

Let's say you want to render a ship coming out of a wormhole and you are looking at it through the back of the wormhole. As the ship comes through, you can see decks and bulkheads; generally a progressive cross-section of the ship.

[pgsmedia]

hmmm...
I can't think of anything like that, per se.
A good place to start is, maybe, it just might let you use a bool modifier and put the result on a separate layer with that layer's own, personal lamps, and no lamps on the origin layer.

alternatively:
I don't know the precise situation you're in, but you can usually get away with just making the bool result shape, and using the hook modifier to link the vertices to animated empties.

If it's a complicated shape(a lot of vertices), you can instead give it a lattice modifier and use the hook modifier to animate the individual lattice vertices.

That may give you a good direction, at least.

[pgsmedia]

yeah, that test render would help a lot.

[agentxi]

that procedure sounds like you will need to model all the details of inside the ship. if you can't provide a test render, could you perhaps post up your animatic for that animation sequence? might be able to help figure out some tricks and tips if we know what exactly you are going for.

[amism]

The function "set clipping border" gives me something like what I need in the GUI, except that whatever it clips is hollow. I'm sorry, maybe I should just learn to crawl before I try to fly.

[pgsmedia]

Yeah, that's absolutely essential with Blender. It sort of works in its own way, but it does it so good!
Along those lines...There is a valuable little zip file on the Blender download page called a regression kit. No one ever sees it, but it's priceless for learning. It holds many .blend files that the producers used to test the program. It shows every function, in one way or another.
Granted, it takes a good bit of reverse engineering, but it's very worth having.

[amism]

Thanks! I'll look into that!

[agentxi]

The function "set clipping border" gives me something like what I need in the GUI, except that whatever it clips is hollow. I'm sorry, maybe I should just learn to crawl before I try to fly.

if you have the patience, then learn what you need to learn to complete the job. yes knowing the basics help, but you'll learn that while you work on projects. Don't give up just keep going with it.

PS: a render of your model or even screenshots of your scene would be helpful

[pgsmedia]

Originally Posted by agentxi

yes knowing the basics help, but you'll learn that while you work on projects. Don't give up just keep going with it.

Well said.
However, Blender is a famously intimidating program.
So many new users run away from it just because of that.
Taking a few moments to study the UI takes away all of that, so can it rightly be called "giving up"?

[agentxi]

so i just remembered a trick that might work (not sure, cuz i'm not exactly sure what you're doing)

If you use an animated transparency map on the entire ship, you can animated it's transparency, create a "cross section" style effect on the hull of the ship, as for the inside of the ship, make sure you have it modeled and textured.