Divide a Puzzlepic and animate it?
 

hi,

ich have a photoshop pic with the look of an puzzle.


now i´d like to create an short animation of this puzzle and its puzzle pieces.

can anyone tell me the easiest and shortest way to do that?
i have to divide the photoshop pic in little pieces first.
but doing that by hand is a quiet hard work. Isn´t there an easier way to do that?

when i have all the divided pieces i want animate them.
in my animation i want let the pieces fly around my scene and finally they should rebuild the whole puzzle.


need your help!

THX
Sebastian

I don't think you're going to find any magic workaround for this... if you want the pieces to be separate then you'll have to make separate pieces (at least in maya). You may be able to get away with a single texture file by grouping all the pieces you create then UV mapping to the group instead of each piece individually. Even if mapping individually, you can reuse the same texture by adjusting the UVs to only use the portion of the texture they need.

You might consider using Illustrator to trace the paths of each piece then import that into Maya as a curve that you can extrude and cap. I think there is a way to bring photoshop path into Maya also, I've never done it personally.

Good luck and let us see how you ultimately go about this.

In the image you posted, the bigger puzzle piece is partly overlapping the outside border part of the puzzle-image. You'd have to be quite creative in Photoshop to cheat this and get away with it.
Don't you have the original image where it's not divided in puzzle pieces? Or where the puzzle is complete?

If u've got the original,.. model your own version puzzle (at least a look-a-alike). No one will notice it in an animation. ;) If not ... hmm ... use it as imageplane to model the puzzle (?)
For texturing,.. I'd go with mhcannon's group-mapping solution.

i have the original of course, because i created that puzzel pic.

and i can rotate the bigger part of the puzzle back to that position that is fits in the border part of the puzzle.

the main problem is, that i am not a maya pro.
i`ve made a project for my studies 1 year ago. since than it is the first time for me using and working with maya.
for finishing my study i have to create a short animation as a part of my final project.
to finish that i only have 1 week left.
i got the idea with the animated puzzle yesterday. so at least i have to hurry up...

my first thought were:

1. greate a surface
2. texture the puzzlepic on it.
3. cut the surface along the lines of the puzzlepieces
4. animate the surface pieces.

problems:
1. how to cut the surface pieces exactly in the same size the pic has.
2. if i cut the surface, the texture still is one piece.
3. it took to long for me to create all those pieces, i hoped to find an easier way to manage it.


the suggest of mhcannon sounds good, but i don´t know how to make it.
i can create a surface and project the puzzle texture on it. ok...
then if have to cut the surface along the puzzlelines.
how can i do this? is there a possibility to cut the surface or the cube in a way like a knife or a laser going through the object?