Hello all!
My goal is to animate the endpoints of a (renderable) spline by giving them noise positions. Actually I need a couple of lines that create a "drawing" but that's secondary. If I can simply animate the two points of a line with a noise position constraint and the line behaves accordingly, the rest will follow.
I am using Max 2017 and I don't know how to script at all. Whatever I would like to do I somehow manage with the main tools but today I created myself a task that's too heavy.
So I realized, I can only assign a controller to the whole line (the pivot point), not to one or several points.
It also seems like I can only bind the whole line to a dummy, not one or several points.
So my idea was to create two objects that have been given a noise position constraint and find a way to create a line between them. I tried using two dummies and built a cylinder (Cylinder 01), which is basically my renderable spline. So Cylinder 01 is position-constrained to Dummy 01 and its z-axis is look-at-constrained to Dummy 02. Both dummies move around noisily and the cylinder changes position with Dummy 01 and orientation by looking at Dummy 02. The problem is, that the cylinder never has the correct length. I would use a slice modifier with the slice plane position-constrained to Dummy 02 but it seems like I cannot use a controller with modifiers at all. So the start of the cylinder (at Dummy 01) is alright, but never the end (at Dummy 02). I created another cylinder, Cylinder 02 that is position-constrained to Dummy 02 and covering the part of Cylinder 01 that is overshooting. I do this with an orientation constraint to Cylinder 01, making it parallel to it. I gave it a matte/shadow material and a slightly bigger radius (to avoid half pixels showing up in the render). In short: the part of my dummy connection cylinder that's too long is not renderable. For a single cylinder it is not a problem, but for many it is. When the shape which I would like to "draw" with several cylinder becomes more complex, the covering cylinders would hide important areas. Especially corners (where two or more cylinders meet) look bad with this solution. I need a cylinder (or a spline that will be made renderable) that starts at one object and ends at another object while the objects move around randomly.
I also tried two uncapped (so open) hemispheres that face each other with their openings (via look-at contraint) and then used Connect (Compound Objects). This creates a tube (aka the cylinder that I want) between both (hemi)spheres. Well it looks like I had two (full) spheres that are now connected with a cylinder. The problem (aside from needing to do this for all lines in the big "drawing") is, I cannot animate it. Moving the (hemi)spheres does not affect the result of the Connect. Well it moves as a whole but does not change length or orientation. I could animate the (hemi)spheres' position with the XForm modifier before the Connect, but that animation cannot be noised. As I wrote above, it seems like I cannot use a controller with modifiers at all.
I also tried to find a way to make the Protactor renderable or bind an object to it but no success...
I don't know what to do anymore. So after these experiments I come to the conclusion that I simply need to know if there can be a line between two objects and if that line changes when the position of the objects change.
I hope you can help.
