Spline path animations

F

Frank

0
Spline path animations

Greetings,

Just started with Cheetah and have already enjoied the perfect mix of tools for my purposes - and get the idea that Martin is a fairly good chap. ;)

Our company designs and manufactures amusement park rides; specifically what are known as "dark rides" www.simtechinnovations.com This would be your typical Disney like ride wherin you get into a vehicle and are transported through a thememd environment.

What I would like to do is layout the rides and animate vehicles traveling through the scenes. I thought the best way to do this would be to use a spline as the ride path and then apply several modeled objects as "vehicles" to the path and choreograph their motions, including rotations of the vehicles to align the "passengers" line of sight to the left and right of the path...

Though I have foud it pretty nice going learning the program so far, I can't locate any step by step instructions to apply objects to the splines and then define the motion sequences.

Your assistance would be appreciated.

Frank
 
Hi Frank and welcome to Cheetah3D. The forum is an excellent place to look and ask for advise.
I can't locate any step by step instructions to apply objects to the splines
Click to expand...
Look for 'Spline tracking Tag' in the C3D help.
define the motion sequences.
Click to expand...
Look for 'Timeline' in the C3D help.

Hope this is helpful

Andrew:)
 
Hi,
and welcome to the forum. There is also a small example scene which shows how to use splines for animation purposes.

Please check out the "Animation/SplineTracking.jas" example file.

Bye,
Martin
 
Spline Path animations

Thanks Andrew and Martin.

I had another read through, more slowly this time, the links you suggested and did learn a bit more.

I have assigned the Spline Tracking Tag to the object I would like to animate. I have also dragged the spline path I want the object to follow, to the Spline Tracking Tag "path" box. It all looks correct. Please see attachment.

Question. How do I now animate the box? Does this happen automatically when assembled as above?...

Thanks!
Frank
 

Attachments

  • Spline Tracking test.jpg
    Spline Tracking test.jpg
    158 KB · Views: 374
Hi,
In the bottom left corner click the red button. Move timeline slider to 1.0. In the spline tracking properties make the position to 0.500 and click the red button. Press green play button to see animated block:).

Eureka
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top