Problems Animating Along Spline/Path

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

So, I am attempting to animate a roller shutter opening/closing. After modelling the Shutter blades and scratching my head lots to figure out a way to animate it I came up with the following...

I made a block the same height as all my blades then divided the block into equal sections (I.E. 28 Shutter Blades... so 28 Block Divisions).

I aligned the pivot of my Blades to the bottom of each one.

I aligned the block division to the blade pivot locations.

I added Dummies to the Block Division Locations using Attachment Constraints

I Added a position Constraint to each shutter blade, constraining it to its relevant Dummy

I added a look at constraint to each shutter blade, constraining it to look at the above blade.

Then I made my spline/path

I made my block path follow the spline.

All works like a charm... Except when I try to key-frame the animation in the timeline. The blades of the shutter stop moving with the dummies.

Here is a vid that shows whats happening... https://youtu.be/EB8keBSye5w

Any advice on how to fix this???

[leeminardi · Accepted solution]

Here's another approach that may do what you want.

1. Create a string of bones with the lenght of each bone equal to the width of a single slat of the shade.

2. Create a box to represent one slat of the shade and link it to the first bone.

3. Edit/Clone/Instant the box and move to the next bone. From this point you can Edit/Clone 2 or more boxes to create the rest of the boxes. I used a grid to snap to to easily create the bones and boxes to the correct size and position. Link each box to its respective bone.

4. Select the first bone and Animation / IK Solvers / Spline IK Solver and select the last bone and then the spline.

5. Open the Dope Sheet and for Bone001 change the assigned controller for Percent from Linear Float to Bezier Float.

6. In the Dope Sheet add keys as desired right click on the first key and change the percent values as desired then change the values for the other keys. I suggest using a linear transition between keys as a start.