Creating equidistant objects on a curve

# 1 30-09-2006 , 02:01 AM

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Hi,

Let's say I have a guide curve (e.g. the letter S) flat on the plane.

And let's say that I want to create multiple equidistant spheres on the guide curve. How can I go about doing it?

Real life example: Hand rails on a ship.

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# 2 30-09-2006 , 03:05 AM

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equidistant, not so sure about... but you can snap your objects to your curve by moving the object near your curve, than while holding c (with the move tool still selected) you can snap to the curve, and just try to eye it from there...

Accept no substitutions.

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# 3 30-09-2006 , 03:34 AM

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rebuild the curve with the number of points that you want (using edit curves -> Rebuild Curve) the use the snap to pioint to get the object to the equally spaced points oin the curve

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# 4 07-10-2006 , 09:27 AM

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Ok, I think I found a much faster solution.

1. On the Time Slider, set the time to go from 1 to (let's say) 200.

2. Createa vertical railing (aka NURBs cylinders).

3. Draw a curve to represent where you want the railings to run.

4. Select the railing & the curve, go to Animate -> Motion Paths -> Attach to Motion Path.

5. With the railing selected, go to Animate-> Create Animation-> Snapshot ->options.

6. Set the Time Range to Time Slider and Increment to whatever value (let's say 5).

7. Hit the Snapshot button.

8. There will be railings creating now on the curve at almost equidistant.

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# 5 07-10-2006 , 02:35 PM

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thats how i would do it too

also cant u dup along a curve an just set the increments apart

Now at SMU doing BSc 3D Computer Animation so its hard to get on here
My wire render tut https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=20973

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# 6 07-10-2006 , 05:52 PM

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Originally posted by parka
Ok, I think I found a much faster solution.

1. On the Time Slider, set the time to go from 1 to (let's say) 200.

2. Createa vertical railing (aka NURBs cylinders).

3. Draw a curve to represent where you want the railings to run.

4. Select the railing & the curve, go to Animate -> Motion Paths -> Attach to Motion Path.

5. With the railing selected, go to Animate-> Create Animation-> Snapshot ->options.

6. Set the Time Range to Time Slider and Increment to whatever value (let's say 5).

7. Hit the Snapshot button.

8. There will be railings creating now on the curve at almost equidistant.

Originally Posted by

Yea -- creating objects along animation curves is the easy way... but anyone who took calculus knows that it may or may not create equidistant objects depending on velocity down the motion path.

Though you will only really get non-constant velocities down motion paths if you *deliberately* alter the speeds. Maya last I checked assumes constant velocities.

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# 7 07-10-2006 , 05:55 PM

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Location: London

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u dam maths at alevel too
man that its a hard subject

Now at SMU doing BSc 3D Computer Animation so its hard to get on here
My wire render tut https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=20973

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# 8 17-10-2006 , 11:37 AM

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A little investigation and scripting is your friend:

Draw your curve and change the string value in my script to the same as your curve name:

then run this:

int $numb = 100;
float $i = 0.0;
//change this to your curve name
string $crv = "curve1";
//make sure your curve is rebuilt to be between 0 and 1
rebuildCurve -ch 1 -rpo 1 -rt 0 -end 1 -kr 0 -kcp 0 -kep 1 -kt 1 -s 20 -d 3 -tol 0 $crv;

for($i; $i <= $numb; $i++)
{
float $inc = (1.0/$numb) * $i;
float $pos[] = `pointOnCurve -pr $inc $crv`;
sphere;
xform -ws -t $pos[0] $pos[1] $pos[2];
}

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