Baking spline with deformer into spline with PLA

[Brian Jones]

Bake To Alembic works – maybe NitroBake works as well but it’s not free.

[John Mcmullin]

Thanks Brian.

This project was parked for a few weeks but getting back to it now. This site is great for filling in the gaping holes in my knowledge.

Best wishes,

John

[Henrique Bispo]

Baking works well by using a Point Cache tag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmeTBuynCM

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[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Hi Henrique,

Thank you for sharing this with us! Both methods work with polygons, whether using bake as Alembic or Point Cash Tag, and the Tag might have some advantages, such as not needing reference files. However, in Brian’s case, where he wants to apply this to a Spline, the Tag doesn’t seem to work, so we have no choice but to use bake as Alembic, as in the screen recording below.

2026-02-05-11-32-46.mp4 7 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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[Henrique Bispo]

Hi Kouraib Abdmalek,

I shared that method because I ran into the same issue yesterday, and it sorted it for me.

It does work for baking splines, but the video misses a step. After you calculate the Point Cache, you still need to bake the cached spline using Functions > Bake Objects in the timeline panel.

That way, the spline points get baked as PLA keyframes, which is handy if you need proper keyframe animation (like using it with a Step Effector’s Time Offset).

I’ve attached a project so you can see what I mean.

Sorry, should’ve explained that bit better!

Spline_Baking.c4d 581 KB Cinema 4D project files - Click to view

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Screenshot-2026-02-05-113506.png 377 KB Image File - Click to view

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[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Thank you again for this addition! I just hope you could make a screen recording to show how it works. I tried to simulate it, but it didn’t work for me and that’s weird.

[Henrique Bispo]

Hi Kouraib,

I’ve recorded a quick video showing what worked for me, and there’s a small catch.

Turns out the point cache method only works if the source spline is set to Linear with Adaptive Interpolation.

I hadn’t noticed this before because I just happened to be using that spline type anyway.

If you need a different spline type, you can always change it afterwards with a MoSpline object. I’ve shown that in the video as well. 🙂

Screen-Recording-2026-02-11-101840.mp4 84 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Thanks, Henrique, for your response! it was helpful. However, the destinate Spline only sumulates the source one in the soft interpolation tangent, not in the hard, this problem doesn’t exist with the bake as Alembic as you could see in the screen recording, so I believe it remains better than point cache tag with Spline. Thanks again; this discussion has clarified several subtle points regarding this trick. I think users who will follow this will find everythings clear and easy to understand.

2026-02-13-12-03-36.mp4 5 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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