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[Blick Fang]

Helloooooo!


I am trying to do an animation of object spinning in front of one camera.  My first thought was to have the object spin itself in front of the camera and keep the camera stationary.  That didn't work out to well as my object did not want to "spin on a dime"  So I made a 4 second animation and moved the camera to the 4 points.  I thought after I did that, I could curve the path and make it circular.  Thats not working to well either. Are the points editable somehow?  I am open to any suggestions you might have.


As always....Thanks!

[Raxx]

Even if they were editable, you wouldn't be able to get them into a perfect circle. The cubic or whatever function that governs the spline path's structure is not the same as that of a circle's. That being said, however, you can get pretty close.

You want to edit the spline path. There's an Edit Path button (supposed to be keyboard shortcut p, but doesn't seem to work). Just hit the button while the camera is selected, and you can edit each knot on the associated path.

If you want to get a perfect circle, you can do it with ASL. Leslie has some decent starter tutorials (link)that could help you with that. Basically you can use the sin or cos function for the x and z axis.

[ENSONIQ5]

Regarding your original problem, ie. the object not 'spinning on a dime', the most likely cause is the object's origin not being central to the object itself.  The object's origin point is always the centre of the main cross-hairs in Object mode.  For simple, symmetrical objects you can use "Edit>Locate>Center about Origin" in Object mode to move the object to the centre of the cross-hairs (if the object is made up from multiple meshes make sure you group them first).  Then, when rotating the object in Scene mode (either with keyframes or with a script) the object will rotate around this origin point.

[kreator]

I found that Making a Non-Gon say about 48 Then converting it to a Spline using Build/convert to Spline Makes a very good circular path

Then You can Add Whatever to that Path ( Mesh/Cam etc)

Attached is demo for a path in an8 ( Note I set the camera to follow the sphere which is rotating around the Path so It may look as if the sphere is not moving without any background)

But it should give you the idea!

If you want to make the sphere spin just add a controller script for rotation see http://www.anim8orworld.com/Forum/index.php?topic=49.msg134#msg134


Another Example With A satelitte Orbiting a moon Both Using Paths Made from A N-Gon In The attached Zip File.

[Blick Fang]

You guys are the greatest!  There is still hope for humanity......LOL   Seriously,  Thanks!!!!