Help with animating a cone unfolding into a flat surface using MAYA

sian

Any help would be much much appreciated with helping me work out how to animating a truncated cone unfolding into a flat surface. To use for sheet metal development. I can't find anything to point me in the right direction. I'm using maya or 3d max.
Thanks.

RN

Maybe it'll be easier to start from the flat surface / sheet and animate the strength of a bend modifier making it a cylinder. Then you can reverse the animation to go from that revolution shape back to the flat surface.

The sheet is a rectangle, inclined as a slope to create a tapered cylinder (aka truncated cone).

Eric Chadwick

Moving to Technical Talk, from General Discussion. 

sian

thats great