how to show an animation trajectory with a surface

[Visual_E]

if i understood you correctly your problem can be solved by using Animate > Create Animation Snapshot menu item.

[goin]

thanks for your quick reply visual_e. I haven't thought of that one. I just tried it and used a circle to snapshot it along the path and then took the resulting group of circles along the path and made a loft.
Problem though: At the sharp bounce point the loft squeezes itself since the circle shapes going into the bounce points or right after the bounce point are sharply angled and the tube again has some weird cross section at the this point.
I need a very clean path object with a continuous cross section. I am originating from 3ds max, no problems like that there. I know Cinema 4D - pretty easy there too. Maya really isn't easy regarding these things....

[Emil3d]

Goin, you used the right approach and were very close. The animated extrusion and the ball on the motion path will go together if you rebuild the path curve properly.
Go to Edit Curves > Rebuild Curve □, and from the default settings change 0 to #Spans for Parameter Range, and CVs for Keep. You have to rebuild the curve every time before playing the animation after you have moved CVs, unless you used Edit Curves > Modify Curves > Lock Length. I made a quick scene for you that you can use as a starting point. Just press 6 to see color and play the animation to see the result.

Edit the scene at the last frame. Change the shape of the curve by moving its CVs followed by rebuilding it with keep same or new CV count before playing the animation.

To change the size of the ball and its trajectory, Shift select the ball and the profile circle curve at the beginning and scale them together.

To change the length of the animation, type or make sure you have the new frame numbers in the time range slider. Then select the path curve, go to the Motion Path tab in the Attribute Editor, right click on the first button (the icon with an arrow going into a box) and choose motionPath1_uValue. In this node you can change the Time for Key 1 to the new frame number.
You also have to change the keys for the extrusion. One way to do that is to first delete the current keys - right click on the Max Value in the subCurve2 node either in the Attribute Editor or Channel box, choose Break Connections, and then make keys for the new time range.

I hope this helps

[goin]

Emil3d, thanks for your help. I tried to rebuild before but it didn't do it for me back then. I found that modeling a sharp corner with overlapping CVs screwed the animation relationship between the motion path and the animated extrude. I now do a workaround with just placing the CVs close to each other but not on the exact same position and then rebuilding the curve with a specified high number of spans. I noticed in your scene that all your edit points were evenly spaced. Mine were not. So I am taking the minimum distance of CVs making the sharp turn and estimate how many spans are needed to rebuild the curve. I end up with a lot of CVs but it helps the animation and gives the extrude a smooth appearance. That works.
Strange that such simple things as this are easier to do in other applications.... My 2cent :-)

Cheers, Ingo

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