Normally you just can’t deform an animation path in EIAS. However, through my tests on the Storm mini challenge I’ve found a really nice alternative. If you haven’t been reading that thread… it goes a little like this.
Obtain the Path2Line free plugin from the Igors. This will convert a null’s animation curve to a line. Set your smoothing to a very low number. The lower the number, the smoother the line.
This technique requires pathfinder. Load pathfinder into the scene. Parent an ubershape or object to Pathfinder and also parent the path2line group to pathfinder. Tell pathfinder you wish to calculate based off the path’s geometry…and you’re basically done. Path2line continues to convert the effector’s motion path on the fly, and pathfinder can read it. Nesting plugins like this tends to slow things down a little bit, but if you don’t require editing the path on the fly, export it out as a fact model and bring it back in. Pathfinder will go considerably faster that way.
The nice thing about this entire technique is the geometry of the path is now capable of being deformed by any EIAS deformer. In this example I used runwave to jumble up the animation’s path.
