[Brett Thayer]

I wish I could animate it that way..unfortunately the real life object and the screwdriver need to make those moves and positions to demonstrate the product.

In the middle of trying to get the “break away” part of the plug to work correctly I resigned myself to doing just those frames by hand…combining illustrator drawings of the breakaway section in photoshop layers..exported from c4d and imported into photoshop.

It then occurred to me that if I could bend a straight object around a radius and get some twist to it that maybe i could still make it work in C4D instead of by hand.

I’ll take a look at your file and see if I can make sense of what you’ve done. I might have some followup questions.

Thanks. Any help is always much appreciated

Brett

[Brett Thayer]

This sounds pretty complicated for my simple needs.

I was hoping there was some way to turn off visibiity for objects i dont need but still have them obstruct the objects i do need.

[Brett Thayer]

I found a fairly good tutorial on how to animate sweep nurbs. I think this helps a lot but I haven’t tried it yet.

https://www.studiodaily.com/studiomonthly/tutorials/trainup/5192.html

[Brett Thayer]

This might seem like a basic question but can I ad to the spine and animate that or do I need all the points on my nurbs spline before I start?

How do you add to a spline? I know there is an add point function but how about a “continue spline function or add to spline?

To animate the spline how do I add keyframes? for what functions?

[Brett Thayer]

Thanks Brian that helped.. I now have an IK chain but the “effector” doesnt seem to be having the desired results. I assumed the rest of the chain/ bones would follow the lead of the effector.

If you look at the newly update example file here:

https://www.pixelspowerandlight.com/plug_ik.c4d.zip

The end result needs to be something that transforms to a spiral ramp look. The question mark shape needs to spiral up at the tail and bend a bit inwards. In short a banked spiral shape.

In its current state the Ik chain effector will lift the tail end of my model like a tab at that point but the other bones don’t seem to react or follow suit. I have tried limiting their range so they will each bone only effect the portions of the model they are close to.

I’m feeling like I have overlooked something crucial to getting the IK chain to behave properly.

Thanks to your help I’m getting closer even if this doesnt prove to be the best solution for animating this.

Thanks
Brett

[Brett Thayer]

I have been trying to work off an IK example that Brian sent me over a year ago…I have an IK chain built but seem to missing any action on the object I want the IK chain to control.

I need the tail end of the chain to drag the other end along so I can reshape the main object. Does it need to be converted to a polygon perhaps?

See the example object

https://www.pixelspowerandlight.com/plug_ik.c4d.zip

[Brett Thayer]

Is there a way to draw and link a spline to an object then animate the spline having the object deform with the changes of the spline?

[Brett Thayer]

Thanks for your help. I’ll try that.

I’m still need of advice on how to setup the plug for animation. What method will work best.

[Brett Thayer]

The slice needs to be cut off as a separate piece and shown to be removed. A boole or animated textures simply creates holes or masks things.

[Brett Thayer]

Thanks..one last question…

I do a lot of my splines in illustrator and import them into c4d because I like illustrators drawing tools. However, when I merge/ import the spine its always off center at some point like 360, 440,0. Is there any way to make it center imported objects and spline? Its just annoying and time consuming to have to center them manually.

THanks
B