I am using a combination of Cycles material shaders to perform a "clipping" view for a geologic cross-section. The answers to the following question explain very well how to achieve the cut-away view.
How can I easily animate cutaway views on multiple objects?
The difference between these answers and what I am looking for is that with these you can look inside the mesh. I would like to give the illusion of a solid or filled mesh. Even if it appears to be filled with something like colored smoke.
I'm trying to cut hundreds of objects, and cut multiple X-sections (e.g. clip the Y-axis from 90-110, and 190-210, 290-310, etc).
This is an example of an original mesh that I would like to clip:
This is what I would like to accomplish. I did this using boolean modifiers. The problem with this method is it does not scale well to many objects, nor is it simple to make multiple X-sections.
This is where I currently am using Cycles nodes.
This is the node tree with two groups:
I believe that a volume or emission node may be able to provide this effect. I have tried adding it in a variety of places.
Placing the volume absorption node right before the material output:
Placing the volume absorption node between the diffuse node the first location group results in this:
Is it possible to have this geographically clipped material appear to be solid or filled with smoke?
