Working on a vortex, see. It's suppose to start on a flat surface and
become a revolving sink hole, just like a blackhole, and suck much of the
floor tiles around it into it's center.
How? We've tried studying water drains, flushed toilets, video taped all
of that and sat for hours watching frame by frame (Hard core film makers
are we!) and attempted to bring it to Lightwave through bending flat
planes, litterally vortexing polygons, pulling, shifting, railing, you
name it. Nada. Nothing. Zip.
In return, well, we have loads of flushed toilet video. :) Just kidding.
I just had a cool idea on how one could do that, a bit rough to describe
quickly. I'll see what I can put together. Sounds like a job for a
morph, if you care to do it the tricky way...
Exactly what kind of effect are you looking for?
A "Black Hole" ala Disney?
A wormhole (DS9)
Here is a quick idea that may work for you though:
Create a set of spirals, basically a set of logarithmic gradients from
the outer edge to the center. If you only do one gradient, there will
be no ridges in the final vortex. Each transition accross slightly
different gradients will create one 'ARM' of the black hole.
Having created such an image, you now need to animate it into a spining
animation. (pointless if there are no gradients, also the more
repetative your gradient pattern, the shorter the sequence you will have
to create!)
If you now use this as a bump map, you will get, more or less, the
effect that you are looking for. This would be much easier to get
accross with pictures. Let me know if I did OK. If you now add a
coresponding (ie: same arms & animation patters) debris anim as a
texture map.
BTW if you are planing on seeing your black hole, be prepared to have
your science team walk off the job (That's what happened to disney, well
they didn't walk, they just pulled their names from the credits)
