Dear Readers:

I wanted to create a simple animation of a piece of geometry following the path of a curve and also deforming along the curve. I thought I could append a lattice SOP to the network but I do not know how to promote this SOP into a deformable object at Object level to go into the “Path Object” parameter.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

(The reference for this is Maya's “Flow Path Object”)

Sincerely,
markerline

Dear Readers:

Please don't laugh. This file doesn't look nearly like I would like it to. However I wonder if my workflow is correct or am I completely off-base? Please respond with any ideas. File attached.

Sincerely,
markerline

I forgot to mention. The animation takes place in the first 25 frames so you can scrub through these frames to see a deformation. Go into the “Latticed…” network and inspect the wire capture/deform nodes and also the carve and align nodes. Animation channels are in the carve sop.

Dear Readers:

The attached movie shows an illustration of the type of graphical style I am looking to achieve. However, in place of simple geometry I am looking to use text that morphs around the star shape.

Instead of wire-deforms I used a carve sop and animated the shift of the vertices along the star shape to achieve a continuous loop of arrows moving along that shape. If anyone wants the hip file let me know.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can replace the tails of the arrows with any geometry to have it morph along the form of the star (not just follow the path of the star) then I would like to know this as well.

Sincerely,
markerline

Hi
Could this HDA be of use

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=149 [sidefx.com]

Rob

Wow, Rob: That's a really cool asset. Would be nice if I knew VEX so I could customize it a little (haven't yet figured out how to tweak fonts around a curve with this utility). I will look for VEX tutorials.

Thanks again.

-markerline