I love C2 but am at a stand still! Does anyone have any idea, how I might go about animating tank treads. There is a very simple tutoral on 3d cafe using MAX. Un fortunately I don't work in MAX. Does any one have any ideas where I might go to soulve this problem?

Gut idea off the top of my head would be to try an animated texture. I'm not even quite sure how I'd go about that. Have to think on this one a little bit. -Kix

I'd say you could do it with anything grooves with the proper map. If eric would swing on in here and offer a tip or two, maybe you could figure it out. You could also with some work position many square objects along a path and have them follow the path, just move there center point to where they connect to the path. Brian

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/crabdati/viz_617/presentation2/presentation.htm http://www.ingiebee.com/tutorials/Blender%20tutorial%20Tank%20tracks.htm Check out those links. Brian

A method I used in a 2D solution a few years back was to make every fifth link in the tread a color: in this case red. [it was a cartoon tank] But the principle should work here. All I had to do move each red link forward five times, at which time Link B had caught up the starting point of Link A. Because the links were red, I had to show them going under the wheels. I'll assume here that you'll be going for a more realistic look.

You could make one Link look beat-up or slightly damaged. It could bounce a little up and down, jiggle side to side. If this tank is carrying a lot of armor over the treads, you might be able to get away with only animating the tread as in comes over the top of the forward sprocket and down under the wheels, If the bogey wheels are turning, the eye should be fooled into thinking that the whole tread is rotation.

In any event, I think that doing a realistic, "every link is moving" animation might be taking the long was 'round.

Take a look at this: http://ice.prohosting.com~docgacchain.htm there is a small moive and a zipped scene file (39k) Use treads in place of the "links" and some tweaking on the timing & this might work. You'd have to start the animation a few seconds off the 0 keyframe to get a complete set rotating around. mdc

Brian, You probably could use Anything Grooves, an appropriately shaped spline, and an animated texture, except your treads would be curved as they went around the curve so would look a little funny. Looks like mdc has a pretty cool solution. Best regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D extensions for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

What about anything grows?

Anything Grows distributes strands (and tip objects) in a random matter so that wouldn't work. I've been thinking about a way to do ordered strands based on UV values, but if I do it, it would be farther down the line and still wouldn't animate the treads. Best regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D extensions for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com