Animated dashed line along curve in 2.8? No DupliFrames in 2.8.. Please help!

blender2-80
#1

Guys, I’m trying to find a way to make beautiful animated dashed lines along a curve (animating the cut lines on objects), and old methods that seemed to be able to create this (using something called DupliFrames) appear to no longer be available in 2.8…

So with the tools that we have available to us in 2.8, what would be the best way to do this? I want to be able to tweak this curve and have it conform to whatever mesh that I need to indicate to the viewer where stuff is cut, using my dashed lines. So I really want to keep this as curve-based if possible.

Right now I have a rectangle following a bezier curve using Object Constraint > Follow Path, but that is just one rectangle moving along my curve… I want many rectangle instances moving along my curve, and be constant along the entire length AFTER the fist rectangle reaches the end of the curve. So it would be kinda similar to a train suddenly emerging from a tunnel (becoming visible), moves along the tracks, and then enters another tunnel (the end of curve), but the train is seemingly endless, and its just chuggin’ along with its endless supply of train cars going from one tunnel to the other. (Hopefully that was a nice way to articulate what I specifically want).

Please help guys! This is a hot potato! Eeks!

(SterlingRoth) #2

Here is what I came up with:

The stripe effect is an animated shader on a cylinder that has been arrayed and curve deformed along a curve. File attached: stripes.blend (814.1 KB)

3 Likes
#3

I just must help an old Lightwaver. :wink:

This is my approach as a Blender newbie. I hope it helps.

2019-05-16_00-09-14
2019-05-16_00-09-14.gif1140×387 1.69 MB

dashed_line.blend (337.7 KB)

2 Likes
#4

Yes!!! Thank you both! This gig was complex enough already. I was twisting myself into pretzels trying to get this working. You saved me tons of time and brain cells, for sure! Ztreem, yours looks like one the one I will use, being real geo, but SterlingRoth’s is pretty freakin’ sweet too. Nice to have options, and I will have to play with animated texture setup for some other crap. Again, thank you both so much! I hope I get to return the favor to the Blender community, as I get a little more Blender miles on my OD. And yes, I was an old LW’er, but not so old that I can’t learn some new tricks… or a completely whole new 3d app and workflow. :wink:

1 Like
#5

I just can’t thank you enough! You really saved my bacon! Sometimes folks poo-poo my analogies, but I have no doubt my choo-choo analogy was among my better ones, because you made EXACTLY what I effing needed. I’m just pluggin’ this puppy into various animations and off to the races! You rock!!!

#6

Glad I could help.