Tim Nelson Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 Is there a way to have certain objects follow the lead of another object? Say, if I had a sphere with a few spheres behind it...and I animated just the first sphere and wanted the others to follow the same path, but keep the same distance apart at all times. Sorry for the somewhat vague question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 In Max you could link the objects together, and set up all sorts of constraints and that sort of thing. In viz, you will probably be best to simple apply all of these objects to a path, much the same way you would add a camera to a path. You can then offset each object a little so that they "follow" each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted June 20, 2005 Author Share Posted June 20, 2005 Thanks, I'll give it a shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abicalho Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 You can do it easily in VIZ. Just clone the animation and offset it. Or use a Script Controller and use an expression to evaluate the position a couple frames before. Another option: Use Motion Panel > Trajectories > Convert To and Convert From to create a spline or create keyframes making an object move through a spline. Hope these help, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted June 21, 2005 Author Share Posted June 21, 2005 Just clone the animation and offset it. You'll have to forgive me, I am way inexperienced with animation...When you say clone the animation, is that just the same as cloning the object that I am animating? I tried cloning the object, and just moving it back a little, but when I do that, it does not follow the same path as the lead object - it needs to follow the curves & turns. I should have just made a spline and set it up that way. But I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box sometimes and I manually animated my lead object by hand. Thanks everyone for putting up with me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipjor Posted June 21, 2005 Share Posted June 21, 2005 in 3DS try "dummy" objects.. kinda related -PFLOW is pretty powerful/fun... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbarc Posted June 21, 2005 Share Posted June 21, 2005 How about grouping all the spheres then animating the group? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abicalho Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Hi Tim, Open Track View, Copy the Position, Rotation, etc and Paste (not instance) it into the new object. Then move the new keys in time so that they start later. This will mean the object will follow the other's movement because it's doing exactly the same movement, just a little "behind" in time. Hope this helps, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted June 22, 2005 Author Share Posted June 22, 2005 Ahh, that sounds like it would have worked just fine. Ufortunately though, it's a little late for me now since I'm almost done rendering all my frames. I appreciate the help though. I obviously need to spend more time learning the basics of animation for next time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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