Show in Contents
Add to Favorites
Home: Autodesk Maya Online Help
Animating strokes
Animating strokes
Keyframe brush and stroke attributes
Add spring behavior to strokes with tubes
You
can easily add springs to strokes with tubes to give the tubes reactive, interconnected
motion. By animating the movement of the surface with the springed
tubes on it, the tubes will react appropriately.
When you add spring behavior to a stroke, Paint
Effects creates an expression that makes the tubes behave
like springs. You can edit this expression in the Expression
editor.
To
add spring behavior to brushes
- Select
the stroke. The stroke must be on a paintable surface. For details,
see
Paint on objects.
- Select
Paint Effects > Brush Animation > Make Brush Spring > .
The Make Brush Spring Options window
opens.
To see the effect of the spring, move to a frame
after the Start Frame (at least two frames
after) and transform the object. For example, if the Start Frame is
set to 2, move to frame 5.
- Switch
to the scene view, if you are not already in it, and keyframe the movement
of the surface. For details, see the Animation guide.
- Click
the Play Forward button to check
that the tubes are behaving the way you want them to.
- Render
the animation. See
Render a scene with Paint Effects strokes.
To edit spring
settings
- Select
the stroke.
- Select
Paint Effects > Brush Animation > Make Brush Spring > .
The Make Brush Spring Options window
opens.
- Modify
the settings and click Create. Paint
Effects replaces the existing expression with a new one
using the modified settings.
To
remove spring behavior from a stroke
- Select
the stroke.
- Open
the Expression editor (
Window > Animation Editors
> Expression Editor).
- Apply
the Expression Name filter (Select
Filter > By Expression Name).
- Under Expressions,
select the expression for the stroke.
- Click
the Delete button.
To
bake the spring animation
- Select
Paint Effects > Brush Animation > Bake Spring Animation > . The Bake
Brush Spring Animations window opens.
- In
the Start Frame box, enter the
first frame to bake in the animation.
- In
the End Frame box, enter the last
frame to bake in the animation.
- Click Bake. Paint
Effects bakes the expression for each frame in the specified
range so the spring behavior will render properly.