Follow path question

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I got a problem i seem not able to solve…i tried to search the manuak, the forum and the net with no luck, yet i guess it must be a “common” problem…anyway, here we go: i need to animate a guy on his skate. I created a path, and put a follow path constraint on the skate. At this point i had the skate following the path. Then i put another follow path constraint on the root bone of my guy’s armature, and it follows ok. I made 2 actions for the guy (one where he starts skating, and another where he moves his hands and performs on the skate), the second of which is ending on frame 100. The problem arises at the end of the path: no matter how i try, it seems i am not able to animate the constraints influence so that the guy and the skate are not bound to the path anymore. What i did (ie on the armature’s root for the guy) was go in the constraint panel and hit the “edit” button. I then build a curve in the ipo window, so that the value drops to 0 on frame 100. BUT if i make this in the existing “guy skating” action, when i playback the whole animation nothing happens (while it works when i playback the action itself)…Well, all in all, what is the best way to:
. make the skate AND the guy follow the path from frame 1 to frame 100
. make the skate and the guy free from the path from frame 100 on

Thanks for any clues (i hope i was clear enough…)
cheers

[edit]
still working but no success…basically in other words, all i need is the ability to change the constraint value from 1 to 0 in the NLA editor, while i can only get it to work in the action window (but when i click on the x to unlink the action and playback the whole animation the constraint value data is lost…does this make sense?
[/edit]

2

I think we’re all watching this thread to see who’s going to answer. Me, I probably would have set it up differently and also because the way you explain it, it should work.

Could you upload the .blend so we could look at it ? or we’ll all just keep waiting or use our best guess.

%<

3

Well, i somehow managed to get the result i need, but there must be a better/more logical way. The only way i found was creating an action containing the IPO animation for the constraint, and keeping the action selected in the action window so that keyframes are displayed in the top row of the NLA editor, above all the other strips. This way the animation works. As soon as i unlink the aformentioned action from the actions window by clicking on the small x, the constraint is no more animated (and things do not change if i put the action strip in the NLA editor…). Hope this makes sense, again…
Any suggestions on a easier procedure?
BTW Fligh, thanks for answering and…how exactly would you set it up?

4

I would have only one object constrained to the path, maybe an Empty, and then the scateboard and Scater parented to that. If the scater is to fall off the board then (instead of parenting) give it a CopyLocation constraint to the scateboard which you can turn on and off.

%<

5

That makes sense, worth a try next time i face a similar situation. Thanks for caring :slight_smile: