Animate spline primitives with AnimWires

This section provides a workflow example of using AnimWires to animate spline primitives.

To animate the splines, Maya curves are added to the Description which use control maps to specify which primitives are animated by each wire. These maps are typically curve clumping maps or derived from procedural clumping maps.

To use AnimWres to animate spline primitives:

1. Load a polygon object in your scene. Make sure it is selected.
   
2. Open the XGen window ( XGen > Open the XGen Window ), and click Create New Description.
3. In the Create XGen Description window, choose:
   • Splines
   • Randomly across Surface
   • Placing and shaping guides

   and click Create.

4. Use Add Guides to place guides on the object.
   
5. Select the Modifiers tab in the XGen window.
6. Click Add New Modifier in the Modifiers tab, select AnimWires from the Modifier list, and click Ok.

   This loads the AnimWire settings and creates an AnimWires modifier for the selected object.

   

7. Scroll down to the Control Map section of the Modifiers tab and click Create Maps.
8. The Generate Maps window opens. Modify the Points settings and click Generate
   
   For other methods of modifying point maps, see Use point maps.
9. Modify the Maps settings. and click Create .
10. Click Create Hair System in the Control Maps section of the Modifiers tab. The Make Curves Dynamic Options window window appears.
11. Set Output to NURBS Curves, turn on all the options and. click Make Curves Dynamic.
12. Select Create Hair System from the Control Map section.
    
    .
13. Click Attach Hair System from the Control Map section.
14. Click Preview Regions to see which areas are affected by the modifier.

See Render Descriptions.

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