hey, is there an easy way to make a complicated path along a mesh? i need to animate a bicycle going through this land, and i was tired of messing up, and it being REALLY comlicated, is there some way i can like make vertices into a path? anything like taht? heres the track, with no path, if u want higher res, jus tell me!
no
NO??!!? wut a simple answer, simple yet effective, thatnx anyway
Generally, bezier curves are used as a track. You could model a curve to follow the path you want though it will take some time to do this manually.
It should give you pretty good control of the bicycle’s movement across the terrain. Make sure you set the curve for 3D in the Edit buttons.
…you could pick the path, vertice by vertice, duplicate and seperate from the mesh, move to another layer, and work your path out that way.
You could also adapt or utilize Soni Bardot’s OrbitMaker python script to create a virtual mesh path.
It will create an Ipo Curve which corresponds to the mesh.
Here’s a quick example:
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/blender/files/path_mesh.blend
(589 kB)
You would still need to do a lot of manual adjustment work to have the bicycle respond realistically in an animation though.
cool. never saw that script before. thanks.
Just select a row of vertices along the line you want the bike to move along, duplicate them, convert to curve, make the curve into a path. assign it the appropriate number of frames, set animation buttons to ‘curve path’, and ‘curve follow’ as needed, and bingo. Also, I don’t know if this helps, but it always helps me to visualize paths, and also IPO’s as meshes. Once you make the relationship in your mind, animation, meshes, paths,…all basically the same thing, and you treat one in much the same way as any other object.
how do u convert to curve?
Alt C
Alt-C convert curve to mesh, not the other way around IIRC.
Martin
thought so, too bad…
I thought you could make a curve out of a mesh segment for some reason. I’ll have to investigate.
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guess i was wrong,…you can always just line it up manually. sorry for sending you on a wild goose chase. 
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actually it was part of my evil plan to bump you out of the WC! :o (just kidding)
Hey skeletor, if you read this, here’s an idea for you…next time make your terrain out of surface curves.
Remember, also, that a bicycle is not just one object…actually two…so you would have to make two objects follow the same curve with distance between the two, connecting both objects (wheels I assume) with the frame of the bicycle. For a realistic effect, it would not be able to follow a straight path over the mountains, as the ball did in the script above. The front wheel would have to steer, the gravity of the terrain would have to be taken into account…and then if it is a mountain bike, shocks. The bounce of the bike, tire slippage…
Funny…it seems like a simple project but there are so many factors involved. I wish you the best of luck.
its only sorta a project, i go on adventures like these jus to see wut blender is capable of! i hadnt taken into account the forks, shox and wutnot! but thats thinking! wut is a surface curve? neva hurd ofit! ha, so many features, so little time!
wut is a surface curve?
3 kinds of curve in Blender. Nurbs, Bezier, and Surface. For some strange reason Surfaces are in a seperate menu.
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how would i make a surface curve with that bump on it? jus the same way as a mesh?
Use Qwert’s method. Select a loop and duplicate it, move it to another layer, add a curve and use the loop as a template to snap your knots to the verts.
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Just wanted to add one more thing. You can always create the path first, duplicate it, convert the dupe to mesh, build the terrain from that.