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Follow Path

Animates an object along a curve.

This tool is useful for quickly animating an object moving along a specified path. For example, you can make a plane fly across the sky.

Using Follow Path

  1. Create the object you want to animate along a path.

  2. Use the Curve tool on the Create tab to create a curve object representing the path.

    Use a polygon curve (polyline) for a path of straight lines with abrupt corners. Use a bezier curve for a path where each transition can be either smooth or sharp. Use a NURBS curve for a path that is always smooth.

    See also how to reshape a curve by moving points.

  3. Click the Follow Path button on the Modify tab.

  4. Click the object to associate to the path and press Enter.

  5. Click the path you want the object to follow and press Enter.

    Note

    The Follow Path tool automatically keyframes the Position parameter to 0.0 at frame 0 and 1.0 at the last frame of the current range. You can press Play on the playbar to see the path animation immediately.

Object parameters

The Follow Path tool sets up a couple of parameters on the following object for you. You can use the parameters listed below to control the following behavior. These parameters are on the following object (not the path) on the Transform tab below the transformation and look-at parameters.

Path Object

A reference to the curve node or object you want this object to follow.

Roll

The orientation of the object around the path.

Position

The position of the object along the path. 0.0 means at the beginning of the path, and 1.0 means the end. The integer portion of the position is used as the primitive number inside the geometry while the fractional part indicates the u value on the primitive.

If the primitive number does not exist, then it is wrapped back to the beginning. So for numbers greater than 1.0 in a path object that only have a single primitive, it wraps around to the beginning again. You can easily animate something moving around a circular track simply by continuously increasing the position value.

Keyframe this value to animate the object moving along the path.

Note

The Follow Path tool on the shelf automatically sets keyframes on this parameter that you may want to edit or replace.

The Parameterization option controls how position values between 0 and 1 correspond to knots on the path curve.

Parameterization

Controls how the Position parameter is translated into a point on the path curve. Use Arc-length (the default) to interpolate the position values evenly along the physical length of the curve.

Use Uniform to distribute the position values between the knots of the curve. This lets you slow down the object at certain points by bunching up knots in the path curve. However, it is much more convenient to simply edit the animation curve to control the speed of the object along the path.

Orient Along Path

Orient the object according to the path’s curvature.

Orient Up Vector

The direction vector of the object’s Y axis to orient with.

Auto-Bank factor

Controls automatic banking of the object as it turns corners. Set this to 0 to turn automatic banking off.