JEBFilms Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 While I'm not new to 3D animation (been using 3DSMax off and on since it was in v5 way back) I am entirely new to Houdini. I have a plug in that creates an animated mesh along the length of a spline and, while I get it to work, animate and render out just fine, for some reason I can NOT get the base spline it follows to animate and I to be able to get the effect to work, I need to be able to animate the vertices of the spline. Auto-key and manually setting keyframes hasn't worked, but works for other things like mesh objects and what have you. I'm currently using Houdini FX v.12.5.316.22, if that helps. Does Houdini, for some reason, not allow the animation of splines? I'd find that a little hard to believe... can anyone help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kleer001 Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Can you post a video or a hip file? My first instinct is that you'll want to drive the points of your curve by locators. Then you can animate those locators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avak Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I think he is looking for : 1- how to make a " follow path" deformation 2-how to animate the points of that path Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JEBFilms Posted January 13, 2015 Author Share Posted January 13, 2015 Thanks for chiming in, guys. Here's a screen capture (Sorry, no audio and kinda crap resolution. Fraps just wouldn't work today.) I already installed the OTL. It's an energy stream from "Ghostbusters." It requires a path to follow, and the maker of the OTL uses a spline. I have the auto-keyframing on, moved around the slider and changed position of the vertice. Nothing. Hit K to set a keyframe. Nothing. Even hit CTRL-K just as a random shot in the dark. Nothing. Then, of course, my Houdini crashes since my screen capture software is nonsense.Like I said, I am incredibly new to Houdini and pretty much have no idea what I'm doing here. Any help on how to get that vertice to animate, or any other path I could set it to so I CAN animate the path would be amazing and you guys would be my heroes in life. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Hey :] The easiest thing to do would be to select a point and with your cursor over the Viewport (that's important !) press Tab and select Transform. You can then animate the point using the Transform node. Repeat for other points. You may also want to check out the Carve SOP - you can use the First and Second U to control the length of your curve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 yep - if you look at your parameters you can see that every time you change the location of a curve point what you're really doing is changing the creation of the curve itself - NOT moving the CVs... you can animate these CVs by placing a transform SOP down (one for each CV) and either animating each of these inside SOPs, or use channel refs from Nulls at the Object level (this is better) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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