Animating Rail clone spline

[johnnelsonvfx]

Currently I am trying to make a shot breakdown of my railclone setup. Its is a railclone setup of The Great Wall of China. I am trying to animate the spline with a soft selection to have it land in place.  When I render the animation it changes the random instances of all the segments, so the walls are constantly changing shape,  is there a way to lock the random instancing so it keeps a consistent look and not change?

I also tried animating the spline properties via the start and length values. this also changes the order and randomization of the objects frame to frame

[Paul Roberts]

Hi, Thanks for the question. Several things may trigger the geometry to be re-seeded, especially if the length of the spline or the spline sections is changing. I'm not sure if this will help for your case, but one solution is to force a fixed number of Evenly and Default segments. To do this:

• Change Rules>Default to Count and use the count value to set the number of segment to appear between evenly segments
• Change Rules>Evenly to Count and set the number of evenly divisions to be used along the spline

Because the number of segments will not change using this setup, there is less chance of the random algorithms being reseeded.


I hope that helps, if you need further assistance you can send us the RailClone style on the animated spline (no need for the rest of the scene) to helpdesk@itoosoft.com and I'll happily take a look.


All the best,


Paul

[johnnelsonvfx]

Thank you for responding! I will look into this method. Unfortunately i can not change what has already been aired since the requirement for the VES is to show the breakdown as it appeared on television. If this fix would change the order of what has already existed than I will run into problems. I think my best bet in this case is to convert it to a mesh and rig it for my needs!

thank you for your help

[Paul Roberts]

Hi,

Another option might be to use RailClone tools to create separate instances from your model - you could then animated them dropping into place sequentially, piece by piece. If you tick Separated Meshes you'll force a different object for each RailClone segment.



We'd love to see the breakdown once it is public - sounds like it's a great use for RailClone. If possible would might be able to add it to our gallery?

All the best,

Paul