geometry follow path

I’d like to be able to create a path for geometry to follow/animate along in Touch rather than 3d app if there is a good method?

thanks

so I’ve created a simple vertex SOP and asigned that as geo COMPS path SOP. nothing happens when i play the timeline but I can manually animate if I slide geo COMPS position slider in xform.

also, once geo is animating alng, can timing be adjusted?

cheers

quine

well you need to put some keyframes on the position parameter
so get a CHOP - and export that to the COMP’s position slider

you can of course adjust the timing by adjusting your CHOP(s)

wee! that worked great. for now i just used a null SOP and drew a path in the editor to make a path. any better methods are welcomed : )

the keyframe editor takes a bit of getting used to but does the trick…

cheers,
quine

You’ll be happy to hear we have a much better keyframer coming soon.

can i import a line/path from a 3dsmax to use as a path? I have tried simply creating a line and exporting as fbx but SOP’s are empty when imported to TD.

Has anyone had success with this?

The FBX importer doesn’t yet support importing nurbs curves (just haven’t gotten to it yet). If you send me the sample file I can add support.

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Will do.

I’m not sure yet if it will be needed if we can set up camera moves and import those then that might be a better method.
If we have one long camera move, can it be ‘paused’ at certain points and pickup again once triggered somehow?

yup, you’ll be able to setup a CHOP network that does that.

wicked. more later im sure.

tks

Hi Malcolm,

So we’ve made progress with the model. I have asked our 3d guy to render out a camera with keyframes to test.

I imported the fbx and see the camera moving in the main COMP window. Now I am trying to figure out how to render from that view. I drilled in to the COMP and tried setting up a render top but nothing shows. There is quite a bit of geometry. Do I have to list it all in the geo parameter?

Can I send the fbx? He mentioned that he would like to be able to use paths instead of keyframes as he could add a second as a look at path.

tks
c

You have to point the Render TOP to the geometry using the ‘geo’ paramter, however you don’t need to list each node individually. It searches recursively down into each COMP that is listed, So if you have your FBX model imported into /project1/mymodel, you can simply put /project1/mymodel in the geo parameter, and it’ll render everything that’s inside that COMP (even if they are buried many levels deep inside other COMPs)

Also don’t forget to setup a light or two.

If that doesn’t work, you can send me the .fbx file and I’ll take a look.