CGTalk - Motion Path U value limited to 0.4 !?!?

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Weequay

01-19-2005, 05:31 PM

I am trying to animate a snake along a path and I found a great tutorial on how to do so here:

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~cariesta/MayaCourseNotes/html/body_deformations.html

HOWEVER!

I have two gripes:

1.) - in order for the snake to be able to follow the path correctly, the pivot has to be centered to the object which means I cant begin and end the animation path with the head.

2.) and this one really bugs me.... it seems my u value is limited to a max of .4! this means that if I want to change the speed at which the snake moves (which of course I want to do) I only have the values between 0 and .4 to work with. Anything lower or higher in the graph editor, the snake just wont move. And whats worse, when I try and slow the snake down for a moment, the animation gets CHOPPY. This is because it is trying to calculate a value at the fourth decimal place which maya wont do. Instead, it waits until it reaches a value it recognizes and then it jumps to that point on the spline.

This is unacceptable and for me, unfixable. Does anyone have a solution for this?

Thanks sooooo much,
Mark

djx

01-23-2005, 06:26 AM

Im not sure why it isnt doing what you want. (My only gripe with motion paths is the way things flip depending on the curvature of the path.) You should be able to achieve nice smooth motion, and you should be able to have the pivot at your snakes head (though you maybe will have to extend the path at the start, so that the entire snake starts on the path).

Something I have always found helpful, is to rebuild the path curve as uniform and with more spans and retain history (the connection to the original curve). Use the rebuilt curve as the path curve, and do any changes to the path on the original curve. This helps to make your animation easier to control since the u-value now changes smoothly along the path.

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