Create secondary movement and growing objects.

Hello everyone,
my site isn't still up at the time, but the blog will always contain the most recent news.

Just bought yesterday a new book, Mental Ray for Maya,3dsmax and Xsi by Boaz Livny.
What a great book, a full description of mental Ray render engine and shader tree with the advantage of detailing in the different host applications.

OK lets talk about one of the current challenges i am going for.
I was asked to create several robots for a company video, these include all sorts of secondary movement like a cable hanging from one piece to the other, and growing parts.

The following examples show what sort of stuff i am talking about.






Those were just preview video grabbed from 3dsmax View port.

The construct this effect is quite easy, first create a spline and add the Spline IK Control Modifier.
Create helpers for the spline.

Then select the top helper and apply to it a position controller, in this case a spring controller.

With the spring controller assigned modify its mass property's to a value of your like, like 600.


Then model a object , and apply a path deform bidding modifier , setting the path to be the created before spline.


Animate stretch and percentage , plus animate the helper with spring modifiers and you get something like this.



Hope it help you.
Thanks for reading.