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Animating a closed spline and applying a colour to a specific area of the splines model
Hi I have a scene where I am showing a boat being lifted out of the water. I need to highlight the fact that the rope/cable is moving in a particular direction as the cable lifts the boat up. I am using a spline to create the cable….
1. What would be the best way to animate a closed spline so that it moves in a clockwise/anticlockwise direction and shortens as it does so while maintaining a pivot point ?
2. Is it possible to apply a particular colour to one part of the cable so that when the spline animates the colour travels also (making it easier to see the rope movement ?)
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3 Replies
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As far as shortening a closed spline, the simplest way would be to animate the points (PLA). A more flexible approach would be to use a pose morph tag.
Rotating the spline is a whole other ballgame. What I would do is use a spline wrap or sweep nurbs to create the cable and animate the offset parameter to achieve the rotation. That’s going to be tricky if you just make a closed spline shorter because your cable will also get shorter.
In reality the cable doesn’t get shorter, so you may have to use an open spline instead of a closed one and make sure that it’s long enough to accommodate the full length of cable once the loop section has been shortened.
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Thanks Adam – I’ll try the offsetting option you suggested….
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Hi Adam – I animated my spline and then used that spline in a spline wrap and then suplicated that and tweaked the movement of both so that when one cables ‘ending’ moved towards its starting point the other cables starting point started “following” after it….I just thickened the radius slightly of the second cable to stop the overlapping issue when rendering.
Thanks for the advice it worked great.
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