Path animation

[MasonDoran]

alas....maya does not have this function at all like Max.

To create one though is easy enough:

parent 1st degree nurbs curve to the animated object...make sure the curve is perpendicular to the direction of the curve.
Then use Animate Sweep to duplicate the curve along the animations path. Then select all of the curves in order and loft them. This creates a surface which you can then duplicate a surface curve.....and that is your curve that follows the animation.

You can then of course make this curve a motion path if you wish.

[elvis75k]

wonderfull!! :scream:
Can you spend another minute for me??

-Suppose i have a character (body, hand, head, foot....) already rigged... i wanna do a fighting scene and the character use a sword (or simple mesh). I had to keyframe the sword apart of my character like a manual tracking??? i guess not!

ps: i use the setupmachine- in this case is not a sword but a ball; my hero walk on the floor (what floor?) and take away the ball.
Can you suggest a tutorial?

pps: sorry for my english

[MasonDoran]

yes...gnomon online....look for sword contraints tutorial...i believe it is a freebie.


Setup Machine is nice for automatic setup...but if you dont know what the rig is REALLY doing then i suggest at least know how to rig a character by hand before you go on to animating.

Reason i say this is in order for an a hand to pick an object and move it like a sword...you use constraints and then animate the constriants on/off. In rigging a character, point and orient constraints are used extensively to create control objects for easy animation. Once you learned how to use it here....using it to animate hand held objects will make a lot more sense.

Point constraints lock the translate attributes to the parent.

Orient Constraints lock the rotate attributes to the parent.

So to animate the ball in the hand...you need constraints on the hands to lock the ball to the hand and then keyframe the constraints off when the ball leaves the hand.

[elvis75k]

thank you very much. I've suspected that... I've (before the thread) just constrain (aim) the hand-rig (red box) to the ball but the hand change direction with funny issue... and if i do rotate the top-shoulder-rig to the ball, the ball not do any movement, just a rotation!!! You're right, i do riggin' my character first...

Just another question (the last): can i convert in the graph editor the keyframed rotatex,rotatey,rotatez in -> translatex...,y..z ??

Thanks again..

[MasonDoran]

have you tried to copy and paste in the graph editor? make sure you look at the options box of copy and or paste

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