• Maxon Cinema 4D

  Wavy path appearing from nothing with plain effector

  Posted by Stephen Moore on November 19, 2018 at 1:43 am

  I want to create a path with a wave running along that drops down and appears from nothing. I’ve connected a bunch of cloned nulls with a tracer and have the wave working plus I have the tracer dropping down. My problem is getting the path to appear from nothing.

  I’ve applied a plain effector with a linear falloff that travels along the tracer and a MoGraph fracture so I can apply the plain effector to the rectangle that is swept along the tracer. However when I apply a scale parameter to the plain effector, it scales the whole sweep rather the section within the linear falloff zone.

  I haven’t shown this but additionally I’d like to have the path swoop down as the path appears. I also tried this with a plain effector but as above I couldn’t get it to work just in the linear falloff zone.

  I hope the SS helps by way of an explanation but to be doubly sure I’ve included the project file. Any further explanation will be gladly supplied.

  

  12892_wavyroad.c4d.zip

  Cheers

  Stephen

  Stephen Moore replied 7 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Brian Jones

  November 20, 2018 at 2:17 am

  the plain effector can’t affect the rectangle without affecting the entire sweep, that’s just the way it works. Waht is the ‘wave’ supposed to do? Lift the sweep or make it bigger (a bulge that travels down the sweep – this is what I think you mean)
• 

  Stephen Moore

  November 20, 2018 at 9:46 am

  Hi Brian,

  Thank you for you response. The wavy path will be a road that descends from the top of a hill. I’m building the topography right now, which you helped me with a few weeks ago. I’d like the road to sweep down and follow the valleys with the road appearing very roughly like the SS below.

  

  As you can see I’ve used a taper deformer here for the visual; maybe that’s the way to do it? If so it would need to travel along the spline ahead of the wave, which I’ve tried however the deformer keeps flicking back and forth, ie facing forward and switching direction backwards. It might be a solution if I can stabilise it.

  As an addendum, is it possible to convert a tracer into a ‘regular’ spline, ie one that might be drawn? I’m think ahead a little as I’ll need a way of guiding the road through the topography.

  I hope that helps; any further info will gladly be provided.

  Cheers

  Stephen

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