Attached Link: Lissajous Figure Reference

Hi,

I played around with this and I think I've got a technique that works. There are a couple of things that you need to do.

First, it looks like modifiers are evaluated in order of the objects in the scene. So if you have something animated with Cognito, and a spot light with the Point at modifier aiming it at the Cognito object, the spot light must be after the cognito object in the scene tree. You can do this just by dragging and dropping the light later in the scene.

The other gotcha is that the Point At behavior points towards the object's Hot Point not it's center, but if you're rotating off axis that doesn't help. To get around this problem, drop a Target Helper Object on the rotating object and point at that.

I put together a sample file that uses a modified version of the elliptical orbit tutorial file. It's C4, just let me know if you need one saved in an older version. It's also really a zip file so save it, rename it, and then extract the sample file.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Thanks, I'd guessed there would be a problem with the hot point which is why I'd gone for a cam based approach rather than rotation. The evaluation order I'd never have guessed... Here it is with the spot moving.

And here's the effect with the cognito cubes turned off. Lookout for the finished effect at www.fleacircus.co.uk