Triggering a keyframe animation

[orinfitchett]

I have a curve with a carve node, animated over 10 frames so that the curve grows from point 0 to 10. how would i go about triggering this animation to repeat at random?

[rich_lord]

Its more difficult than it would usually be because you want to animate a field in the carve node, rather than, for example, the position of a point. As far as I know, you have to use CHOPS to do this. Here's the steps and a file. The important, reusable bit is the excellent Trigger Chop.

1 - Create your keyframed animation - In my file I put this on a single point. I keyframmed its X position between 0 - 1. This will eventually drive the Carve SOP.

2 - In a chopnet, use a Geometry chop to read in this points position. Delete the Y and Z channels so you only have 1 channel representing your keyframmed data.

3 -Create some noise(I did it in CHOPS again) and filter this with a Trigger CHOP to create the points that your anim will start from

4 - Use a copy CHOP to copy the keyframmed data onto the trigger points.

5 - Paste the output of that into the carve SOP with a chopcf expression.

Id love to see a cleaner version of this. Anyone have any better ideas?

trigger_chop.hip

Edited May 31, 2016 by rich_lord