How to animate a spring?
 

Hi,

I have to make a spring animation. I know how to draw it, but not how to animate it.

The problem is, that when it's squeezed together. The wire shouldn't be squeezed, only the space in between.

How do I do that in maya?

oh... I thought I knew how to draw a spring... a parently not.:confused:

How do I do that?

Hi,

Use a live tube extrude on your spring curve. Use a circle for the extrude shape. Keep history, and then, when you deform the wire, the space between shrinks, but not the geom.

sjlocke

ah! Ofcourse! well, and that brings me to the next problem: How do I create a spring curve?

tern your snaping on draw a nurbs cerve. say with Z being world up. from the center of the world there put yoru first point like 8 to the left, second 8 up, thred 8 right, and last 8 down.. asoming your looking from the top view..
Thin grab the second cv put it up one. the therd pull it up 2 and the forth pull it up 3. in the Z direction.. up..
duplicat that a couple of times Z+4 and combine them.. and you have it.

Thanks to both for great answers.

But I have one final problem.

I do all that pony say's. When I come to the combine the two curves part, I chose my two curves and goes "attach curves" in the options I chose connect.

Is this the right way to do it?

I get a strange problem, when I try to move the new curve, only the upper part of it moves and also when I scale it.

Do you have a clue?

swifting off the history, did the job. I now see why.

Thanks again, I now have a lovely spring!

I was holding my breth after that fist post after mine.. LOL glad it worked as I haven't sit in front of maya in months.

Another way to create a spring curve is detailed in the tornado tutorial I have here and in text form at my site.

you can also create a circle curve > duplicate transform >rotate it a couple of degrees and move it up (the duplicated curve) and then key "G" quite a few times (pending how big your want your spring) then go to the outliner select in sequence the curves, and loft - et voila

cheers murph

btw: i hope thats not the way you did it mike, or i am gonna look even more stupid!

This was done to create a tornado effect. For details on the tornado, check out the tutorials. To create the spring, though, here's the steps:

1. First, create a curve going straight up from the origin, with a CV placed about every 2 grid lines or so (using a default grid arrangement).

http://www.mtmckinley.net/tutorial/tornadofig1.jpg

2. Create a Nurbs Circle. Make the following changes:

Translate X : -.5
Rotate X : 90
Radius : .04
Sweep : 90
Sections : 3

http://www.mtmckinley.net/tutorial/tornadofig2.jpg

3. While the Circle is selected, press Insert (above the Delete key on the keyboard) and Grid Snap (X) the pivot of the circle to the origin.

http://www.mtmckinley.net/tutorial/tornadofig3.jpg

4. Now, select the Nurbs Circle and then the Curve in that order. Go to the Modeling Menu Set and Surfaces > Extrude. In the Channel Box, under Inputs, make these changes:

Fixed Path : ON
Use Component Pivot : ON
Use Profile Normal : OFF
Rotation : 5000 (adjust this for number of twists)
Scale : 6 (if just straight spring is wanted, leave at default)

http://www.mtmckinley.net/tutorial/tornadofig4.jpg

5. Select an isoparm on the spiral surface and go to Edit Curves > Duplicate Surface Curve. You now have a spring-shaped curve.

Been a couple versions since I did this, but hopefully it still works the same way.

mtmckinley > thanks for that! I'm looking forward to true it out.