pathanimation
 

Hello,
we want to animate a scene where a snowboard is boarding down a hill. Our problem is that we want to use a gravityfield to get realistic motions like little bounces etc. and we also want to influence the direction of the the movements. Should we use a kind of path to do that? Or is there any other possibility?

Thanks
Thelfi

I'm not too sure of the specifics in how you do this but what you are requiring is an influence object of which you can adjust the relative position using an expression or something.

I am guessing you're always going to want the -Y direction being influenced by the gravityfield you might then want to make and expression like:

snowBoarder.tx = influenceObj.tx
snowBoarder.tz = influenceObj.tz

for an absolute positioning or for a relative positioning you would probably use:

snowBoarder.tx = snowBoarder.tx + (influenceObj.tx * 0.25)
snowBoarder.tz = snowBoarder.tz + (influenceObj.tz * 0.25)

that will add a 25 percent of the influence objects distance

you could then constrain the influence object to a curve and the Y axis of the influence object to the snowBoarder.ty this way as the gravity pulls the snowboarder down the influence object get's pulled down the curve the x and z axis of the curve constrains the x z axis of the influence object which influences the snowboarders position either relative or absolute depending on your needs.

I imagine you could probably group your character and then attach the group to the path. Then you could do whatever influences to the character itself, and it should still follow the path as a whole.