Thursday 23 February 2012

Mel: ld_animToCurve - create nurbs curve from moving objects or verts

Download the script directly, here (follow link and place it in maya's script directory)
or from creativecrash here.




Creates a nurbs curve for each selected object and/or vert over a series of frames (like a motionTrail, but without the motionTrail bit).

Works using xforms - so object could be skinned, constrained, driven by expressions etc,
Simple to cleanup - just rebuild the curve,
Simple to use - select the objects and/or verts you want and execute using ld_animToCurve ;

Useful for quickly putting together complex shapes or tracking a vert's/object's position.


Updates:
07/03/12:  0.6.0
    Fixed issue selecting some verts.
                 0.7.0
   Added poly faces - now requires modified version of owen burgess' 2009 script "getfacecenters.py" (included).


8 comments:

  1. cool, script. dunno what to use it for atm, but there are bound to be some motiongraphics or similar to use it for.

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    1. cheers Toke, it was better when it worked on all/most components rather than just verts, the simple way would just chug too much on heavy meshes, I've got a few ideas to get it sorted though.

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  2. Cool! You can use this to do ribbons as motion trail... Love It!

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  3. Hi Lee, I asked the same question at your Vimeo channel, but perhaps it's better to ask here.

    I tried selecting multiple vertex at once, or vertex that is adjacent to each other, it fails. The weird thing is, if I select few vertex randomly, it works on multiple mesh vertices.

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  4. Hi Jimmy, apologies for that, updated version available from both mediafire and creativeCrash.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks a lot Lee, this version works like charm. Awesome script, I like the simplicity.

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