Abominable
02-17-2003, 11:09 AM
Hey gang,
I want to know if anyone has a technique for successfully creating and animating tank treads. I am trying out 2 different techniques and both are giving me problems.
1. Making your track piece. Making a CV curve in whatever shape for you motion path. Attaching that piece to the path and offsetting the following duplicate ones so they each have a unique start point. This animation works fine but I cant find a way to change the duration of the animation. It is always what frame range you defined the motion path to be when you created it. The only thing i can do is scale it in the graph editor to speed them up or slow them down, but I need to have control of when i can start and stop these tracks from spinning. I dont think the trax editor can create a clip from a motion path either.??
2. I started with a nurbs circle then pretty much did the same thing as above but then i used a lattice to deform the circle into the shape i needed the tank tracks to follow. So then all i do is select them all and animate the rotaion of them because they will follow the circle as a reference no matter what the deformed shape is. This worked great and what was what i needed for user control....BUT, when i start moving the lattice around to deform the circle, my spacing between each tread plate starts expanding or closing in on itself causing all the geo to collide which sucks.
Any help would be greatly accepted cuz my brain is fried on this one. I just want to be able to control when the tracks spin and stop at different times in the scene.
Thanks everyone.
:rolleyes:
I want to know if anyone has a technique for successfully creating and animating tank treads. I am trying out 2 different techniques and both are giving me problems.
1. Making your track piece. Making a CV curve in whatever shape for you motion path. Attaching that piece to the path and offsetting the following duplicate ones so they each have a unique start point. This animation works fine but I cant find a way to change the duration of the animation. It is always what frame range you defined the motion path to be when you created it. The only thing i can do is scale it in the graph editor to speed them up or slow them down, but I need to have control of when i can start and stop these tracks from spinning. I dont think the trax editor can create a clip from a motion path either.??
2. I started with a nurbs circle then pretty much did the same thing as above but then i used a lattice to deform the circle into the shape i needed the tank tracks to follow. So then all i do is select them all and animate the rotaion of them because they will follow the circle as a reference no matter what the deformed shape is. This worked great and what was what i needed for user control....BUT, when i start moving the lattice around to deform the circle, my spacing between each tread plate starts expanding or closing in on itself causing all the geo to collide which sucks.
Any help would be greatly accepted cuz my brain is fried on this one. I just want to be able to control when the tracks spin and stop at different times in the scene.
Thanks everyone.
:rolleyes: