I thought about constrained clusters, but for some reason thought they didn't work with deform by curve. That's basically where my hair-brained scheme came from.
Thanks! Paul On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] < [email protected]> wrote: > Create a cylinder surface with the base at zero and the height at 1. > You’ll want to freeze transforms to get this right.**** > > ** ** > > Deform the cylinder to curve uising Animate>Deform>Deform> By Curve.**** > > ** ** > > Create a cluster at the end of the deformed cylinder**** > > ** ** > > Constrain the connector to the cluster using Object to Cluster and use the > normal constraing in Obj2Cls to align the connector to the end of the cable. > **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > You can use the curve deform scale to extrude along the curve, but for > best results the source mesh or surface needs to be one unit in length in > Y. Therefore scaling the curve deform to two will make it two units long > along the curve, etc. **** > > ** ** > > --**** > > Joey Ponthieux**** > > LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)**** > > Mymic Technical Services**** > > NASA Langley Research Center**** > > __________________________________________________**** > > Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not **** > > represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.**** > > ** ** > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Paul Griswold > *Sent:* Monday, April 22, 2013 1:30 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Did I over-complicate this?**** > > ** ** > > I wanted to ask for your collective wisdom on this.**** > > ** ** > > I have a project where I'm animating around 30 different cables. Some are > USB, some Firewire, and so on. Initially for the storyboards I use > PowerExtrude to lay out all the designs, but now I need to fly the cables > down my curves.**** > > ** ** > > If I didn't need the connectors, I could just animate PowerExtrude and be > done with it, but all the various connectors need to be there as they > extrude. **** > > ** ** > > My thought was, constrain a null to the curve, animate the null down the > curve and use that to drive PowerExtrude. I then parent the connector to > the null.**** > > ** ** > > I can't just build the cables beforehand and then deform them with a curve > (AFAIK) because they need to appear to be growing from the client's product > and the connectors can't be deformed by the curve in any way - just the > cables can bend.**** > > ** ** > > So does my method seem ok, or is that overly complicated for what I'm > doing?**** > > ** ** > > Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees.**** > > ** ** > > -Paul**** > > ** ** > > ** ** >
