Motion Path U Value scales with Unit Setup

[phsc1005]

I have a fairly large scene set in meters, but the U Value of my Motion Path only scales from 0-0.01. This is annoying, because I sometimes need very precise control and 4 digits don’t suffice. Now, when I change the Units to centimeters for example, it changes back to the usual 0-1 scale.

Is this behavior intentional or a bug? Or is there a solution to my problem I haven’t found yet?

Thanks in advance!

[dinofiguera · Accepted solution]

This Is how the motion path works but like everything in Maya, you are free to change it to your needs.
select the animation controller that you want to use for your path animation and create a new blank attribute to it.
The attribute can be set from 0 to 100 or to the number you need.
go to the U value of the motion path node and break its connections to free up the channel, you can do this from the 
channel box or the node editor by disconnecting the node, or even from the graph editor by deleting the relative animation curve.  Then you use a "set-driven key" to connect the U value of the motion path to your animation controller.  when the U value is 0 your animation attribute will be 0 and when the U value is 1, your attribute is 100.
This will give you a much more controllable path animation curve.
With a little programming skill, it is not so hard to write a motion path tool that does all this automatically.

I hope this helps,

D