Sunday, 13 December 2015

Growth along spline test

Before attempting the fifth shot with introduces the tow cable, I have decided to research methods of growing object along a spline. This seems the most appropriate means of shooting out the tow cable as simply moving it with keyframe animation would look too stiff. 

The path deform tool allows you to grow an object along a spline. This seems the most effective solutions to simulating the tow cable. I will be able to use this in both tow cable shots - the first where it hits the foot and then when it wraps around the legs. Starting off with a cylinder the tool allows this shape to deform and grow until the end of spline. 


I had an issue where the growth just resulted in a straight line from the starting point to the end. The solution to this was to add more segments to the cylinder as it needs more parts to define the bend. The advantage of using non destructive modifiers such as this means I could simply go back to the cylinder stack and change this property.



The below gif shows how the modifier can be used together with keyframe animation to produce a growing effect:


Good parts:

  •  Realistic growth animation compared to just moving something offscreen into shot using movement and keyframe animation
  • More control over the where the cylinder goes due to the editable spline that can be postiioned anywhere in 3D space

Improvements: 
  •  Smooth animation requires many vertices on spline and many segments on cylinder

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