How to create a animated wavy curve?

[Splitting_Atoms]

Hi guys, I need to make this wavy line in Blender…

I know how to make the basic shape with bezier curves…but I can’t figure out how to animated the points so that it looks like the examples… When I flip the vertex point in the curve and animate that… it looks wacky and not like its flowing. ITs more like its just flipping on the x axis.

This is what im getting myself

Please advise. Whats the best way to get this effect?

[Okidoki]

Try animating the start end mapping and moving on the x-axis (?). The wave has to be longer than what is shown because the waving is done by re-mapping… or just a moving camera…

[bandages]

Look into the wave modifier:

Here, I’m doing it on a curve object, since that’s something you expressed interest in; if you do it on curve splines, like I’m doing here, use plenty of controls and make sure your handles are set to automatic.

But you can just as easily do it on a dense mesh (in fact, it’s probably easier, better to do it on a mesh.)

[LordoftheFleas]

You get that same effect if you look at a rotating spiral from the side. We can exploit this by animating the the control points of such a spiral in a rotating manner (for example using a hook) and shrinkwrap-projecting it onto a plane:

Important: activate “apply on spline” in the shrinkwrap settings, add some extrude (not bevel) to the curve, and, if you need a smoother result, add an additional subdivision surface modifier.

wave_animation_1_v01.blend (118.5 KB)

Edit: and if you want your wavy line to appear to be thicker at the hills and valleys as in your clip, then use a screw modifier instead of the extrude options:

[Splitting_Atoms]

Thank you so much for your reply everybody! This was a great help so thanks

I have gone with the solution that @LordoftheFleas offered… but im running into a small problem
When I create my own spiral and apply the modifiers to it… i can’t seem to get it to work with the empty.
Its not rotating when the empty rotates

I only selected the empty in the Hook modifier…but im guessin i need to set something else regarding the empty? Since it’s not rotating

please advise! and thank you all again

edit: I got it working by just creating a new empty and parenting the spiral to it, then animating the rotation of the empty… so all seems to be good. Im still curious what I forgot to set using your method though…

[LordoftheFleas]

The nice thing about hooks is that you can attach it to individual vertices.

1. select both the empty and the curve in object mode (select the curve last so it’s active)
2. go into edit mode, select the vertices you want to hook (here: all of them)
3. press ctrl-h to open the hook menu:

If you already created a hook modifier, you can attach the vertices to it, or you can create a new hook.

Edit: for me, parenting did not work, because then the thickness of the resulting wave-line changed based on the rotation of the parent. The reason for this is that the direction of the curve’s extrude depends on the curve object rotation. With a hook, this rotation remains constant as it only rotates the vertices in edit mode.