another cool solution and more scripting like
thx
I like the particle solution as well but you could also just use an extrude and path deform. Use the length of the spline to determine the amount of the extrude. You can then twist it using the path deform.
I also made a script that converts the vertex position of an object over time to a spline and assigns an object to the spline by either patdeform or path controller. You can select as any verts as you want and it will built a spline per vert… So now you can animate and distort the traced mesh object with noise and standard PRS animation and you’l get nice looking splines.
The script is very WIP… but I’m starting to build an UI for it to allow to pick instances and assign those as path controller of path deform… I can put up the test code if anyones interrested.
-Johan
That’s a cool tip. Cheers, Neil.
On the particle system one, you can also use spawning and any number of space warps to control how the wires optionally split and are distributed.
Path follow overrides other space warps though – I’m not sure if you can use the swirl options easily with PFlow, but basically anything you could script in PFlow, or create with operators and warps you could creating wires out of.
Basically, as people have said – there are quite a few approaches you can take.
- Steve
Also… I can’t remember if the Ivy plugin allows you to just have the source splines – although that would probably be easy to implement.
- Steve
JHN –
[i]I can put up the test code if anyones interrested.
[/i]Yes, I’d be interested to see it…
Again, it’s really messy and highly unoptimized code.
But it will take a mesh object and trace it’s selected verts (through a mesh select) and build a spline. It will build objects on request that use a path follow controller or pathdeform WS modifier. And makes sure the object on the curve have the same speed as the vert on the object. Again it’s really messy, I’m building an UI and code optimised version now, and it’s much faster.
http://scripts.subd.nl/?f=JHN_traceVert_WIP.ms
-Johan