Animated pattern- advice needed

MasterBeard

Hello Polycount mates.
I need to do an animation pattern of boxes movin up and down creating some waves. Could anyone please give me some advice to hot to do this the best way?
I tryed to animate them individualy but it will take lots of time. Im sure there is some good ways to do this. Im including some examples in attachment.
If you could help me to solve this task i would appreciate this very much.

p.s. this is a gif of what im trying to do but this is cylinder and im tryint to do a planar.
http://www.bestgifever.com/?yes=30200ec4708c44bc4d1bd9d79e9bd97b

slipsius

I would grab every box, key it where it is, then move them all up to where you want them, key them all again. Then, say you have 10x10 rows, go into your top view, and grab the inner 9x9, offset the keys in the graph editor by 1 or 2 frames. then grab the inner 8x8, offset, 7x7, offset, etc etc. Make sense? And i dont mean just the 9th row. I mean the 9th rows plus everything in the middle. so after the first offset, everything except the most outter rows will move in sync.

MasterBeard

I think it will take much time as well. Buts its better then what i was doing. Thanks

slipsius

My method wouldnt take much time at all, actually. 5 - 10 minutes

slipsius

Is this what you`re looking to do?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14662692/Animations/SquareWaveLoop.mov

Literally took me 2 minutes.

MasterBeard

Yes. That is exactly what i was looking for. Can I ask you how you did it? please

slipsius

slipsius wrote: »

I would grab every box, key it where it is, then move them all up to where you want them, key them all again. Then, say you have 10x10 rows, go into your top view, and grab the inner 9x9, offset the keys in the graph editor by 1 or 2 frames. then grab the inner 8x8, offset, 7x7, offset, etc etc. Make sense? And i dont mean just the 9th row. I mean the 9th rows plus everything in the middle. so after the first offset, everything except the most outter rows will move in sync.

Also, dont forget to set all keys to infinity

MasterBeard

Thanks a lot mate You helped me a lot.