You can generate a new shape from an animated object such as a plane or curve using Animate > Create Animation Snapshot and Animate > Create Animated Sweep.
Animation Snapshot creates copies of animated objects at intervals of a playback range. Animation Snapshot works on NURBS or polygonal geometry. You cannot use Animation Snapshot on objects animated with dynamics and Inverse Kinematics (IK).
Animation Snapshot-generated geometry
When Construction History is on during an Animation Snapshot, you can edit the animation to affect the generated geometry.
To create geometry using Animation Snapshot from animation types such as expressions or Inverse Kinematics (IK), you can convert the object’s animation type to animation curves using Edit > Keys > Bake Simulation.
Because Animation Snapshot and Animated Sweep evaluate the animation and create geometry for each By Time position, considerable processing time occurs for complex objects and animation. For more information, see Turn Animation Snapshot and Animated Sweep on or off.
Use Animated Sweep to create surface geometry from an animated curve. Animated Sweep operates on animated object transformations that have explicit connections to all the nodes connected to the geometry. Geometry animated by dynamics, Inverse Kinematics (IK), and self-referencing expressions, for example, cannot be used to generated Animation Snapshot geometry. Animated sweep is similar to performing an Animation Snapshot of a curve and a subsequent Loft operation.
A simple example of an Animated Sweep would be to create a spiraling tube that decreases in size, much like an animal’s horn. See Apply animated sweep.
Snapshot and Sweep Construction History
Animation Snapshot and Animated Sweep create construction history. This means you can edit the animation used to generate the Animation Snapshot and Animated Sweep geometry.