Animating points along a path

Howdy,

I have been trying to wrestle with this problem for the past week. I can’t seem to figure out how to animate a number of points continuously along a path that changes shape. What I am trying to accomplish is a 3d version of something like the “Vegas” effect in after effects. I have included an example that uses instancing to deal with the geometry crunching, but at this point i would go for a SOP solution.

I want to be able to control the number of points animating along a path, the speed with which they move, and of course the shape of the path but I can’t seem to crack how to get more than two of those figured out.

If anyone has any ideas I sure would appreciate it.
path question.toe (5.26 KB)

Any particular reason you’re after a SOP solution? At some point you’re likely to bottleneck in SOPs - having done this a lot myself.

That aside, you might consider looking at the Lookup CHOP for instances.

In here you’ll find two examples:
path question_try_lookups.toe (5.02 KB)

Oh I never thought of using a shift chop this looks really useful! Thanks Matthew! Keeping it in CHOP land means i can keep it really efficient. I had just assumed that since some things are easier with SOPs i would have to do it that way. woo!