How Difficult Is It To "Break" A Product?

zombiewhacker

No, no, I don't mean dropping it accidentally or snapping it in two over your knee.

I mean, sometimes sets and props are rigid with no moving parts.  Doors don't budge, windows and drawers don't open and shut, etc.

Right now, for instance, I'm looking at Gas Station for Carrara. There is no indication from the description whether the props within the set are posable (example, showing someone pumping gas).  If each hose, pump, and island are a single, fixed object, how would I "break" them into separate moving pieces?

sriesch

I don't own that particular product so hopefully somebody else can chime in with additional info about it.  However for products in general there are a few tricks you can try, but it might not be possible.  There are probably more things I haven't though of, plus I'm unfamiliar with Carrara and don't know what it's capabilities are so I'm speaking in DAZ Studio terms here, which may or may not translate:

in DAZ Studio, it is possible to hide nodes in the scene.  If the gas pumps were one node for example, you might be able to hide them, load a second copy of the station into the scene and hide everything else, then move the copy that is only the pumps relative to the copy that is everything else. However, if the entire scene was one node, or all parts of the scene that were chrome were one node, you can't do that.  And even if you could do that, all the pumps together might be one node rather than individual nodes, so maybe you would still have a cluster of 6 moving together.  And maybe there would be holes in the ground where the pumps were.  If the hose was a node, if you hid the hose there would probably be a hole where it connected, and if you hid everything else there would probably be a open-ended hose.  So while this MIGHT be possible, certainly don't count on it, and you might have to do cleanup work like making fake plugs to cover the ragged holes.

in DAZ Studio it is also possible to select polygons and create new surfaces from them, then hide them.  This could be used to make holes or hide parts to accomplish something similar to what I described above if the nodes aren't convieniently arranged such that you can just hide them.  However if you aren't just working with a small number or a flat surface, this would be a LOT of work.  Possible, but perhaps often not practical.  Plus you still have the original problem that you can now see inside the holes and see the object is just a paper-thin shell, so you have to add things to the scene to hide that.

Another option if you have a modeling application is to use it like a hacksaw to cut pieces off.  Same problem as described above with the resulting holes and it might be a lot of work to do.

Or, maybe you will get lucky and the objects in that gas station scene can already be moved and no work is needed at all, but of course ask like you just did for each product so you know for sure.

The same issues described above apply to things like doors, windows, drawers.  However, some things might be more easily modified than others.  For example, if you are talking about a house window, it's might be a flat rectangular surface, and you might be able to more easily hide half the polygons then repaint the other half so it looks like it's open, with just a single rectangular primitive across the bottom of the open part to look like a window frame to hide the thin edge.  A desk or dresser with fixed drawers might be used if you could find or create a separate matching drawer prop to add to the scene buried half in and half out of the item of furniture.