I'm trying to make a sphere revolve in a circular path(animation).
Any time saving ideas?
Thanks.

Change the origin of the sphere and then change yRotate. ;=]

That's it! I did the same thing with a pendulum. Thanks.

Orerries? Carolly the Hopeful

No, they're VERY skinny donuts. ;=]

OK, the good doctor did in one sentence what took me five paragraphs :-) Doc, Could your method be modified to make an ellipse? Ming,

There is a way you can do it-it's up to you as to whether it's "time saving" or not :-)

In this example, I'm going to create a orbit with a radius of 5 around the Center of the Poser Universe(tm). It's also going to take 60 frames to complete an orbit. Make sure the animation is at least three orbits long (180 frames in this case)

At frame 1, set the X/Z coordinates of the ball at (0,5). At frame 15, set them to (5,0). At frame 30, set them to (0,-5), at frame 45, set them to (-5,0), and at frame 60, set them back to (0,5). This will establish the "compass points" of the circle, and also set a keyfram every 15 frames. Make sure each section is set to "spline", and not "linear", or "constant".

(If you ran the animation right now, frames 15-45 would make a smooth semi-circle, but the beginning and end won't work properly. That's because the curve of the spline is different at the beginning and end of the sequence than it is in the middle. Now, we're going to fix that).

Go into the animation window, and select frames 2 through 60. Copy them, and paste them starting at frame 61. Paste them again, starting at frame 121. You've now created three orbits of your sphere, but only orbit #2 (starting at frame 60) is perfectly round.

While you're still in the animation pallette, select frames 61 through 120 (your round orbit). Click on the "+" button to keyframe each frame in the orbit. Copy the section, and paste it starting at frame 2, and at frame 121.

When you've done that, you've got three round orbits.

Hope this helps,
Scott

Message edited on: 01/09/2005 23:08

It worked fine geep's way. Thanks. I really don't understand the other way.

I'm thinking I could also "parent" it to an invisible center prop and spin that. Thanks guy's .

ming: That is correct. The object you would parent it to is affectionately known as a dummy object.

Sorry. I have no idea what that means.

NaySayGuy sez: " An ellipse is when da sun blok out da moon or da moon blok out da sun an it git darker or lighter or sumthin' lak dat." ;=]