Maya extrude/animation snapshot paths Question

praxedes

Hi all-

my current project involves quite a bit of wiring and pipe, for which I am using a fair amount of extrude along curve and animation snapshot off motion paths to create the shapes I need. However, if I use a shape that is not rotationally symmetrical (ie circular in its cross section), it is clear that as the object follows the curve, it spins and rotate, and at the halfway point flips through 180 degrees. I have the setting to object up, but have tried all the "up" settings to try address this. The curve has not been rotated, the control points have just been translated into position.

Has anyone encountered this? I hope that it's just something simple I'm not doing right that can be resolved. what I want is for my shapes to follow the curve without any rotation around their vector, if you see what I mean

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks for help in advance
~P~

Neavah

(I'm no expert but) have you concidered this being a gimbal lock related problem?

Does your object (not curve) have any rotate values on it to start? might try freezing transformations...?

praxedes

Sadly I tried that, thanks, to no avail. Cheers for the thought though!

~P~

ivars

Are you saying the extrude spins or an object that is animated along the path?
Screenshots?

praxedes

sorry for not being clear- the animated snapshot has the most issues, the extrude works better.

In these shots, the first is the dupe, the second the extrude. Ignore the weirdness at the base of the extrude version, that was just me not lining the object up properly to start with. The curve for this has translated control points only, no rotated points.

I did the dupe so the changes in direction are clear, including the "switch" through 180- note that this isn't related to the angle of curve, it always seems to happen around 50% of the way along the path (actually where the middle control point is). Maya seems to be interpreting the curve like a "flight path" and banking for one thing, and then that weird halfway switch. This is problematic for me if I want to, for example, generate a complex set of interlocking shapes for a pipe or a collar or somesuch, as the rotation prevents the interlocking from working.






any assistance much appreciated. I tried the np_duplicateAlongCurve script from the Nox tutorial vids, but got similar results with that too So I suspect it's me that's getting something wrong as that ut shows it working perfectly!

Thanks

~P~