How to animate lines?

Beginners
1

Hello TD Forum,

I am working on a project in which I am animating a bunch of animating lines I am calling crawlers. I am new to TD, so please forgive my limited understanding of the TD way. Currently, I am using a Python script to spawn new crawlers and then update each crawlers position each frame until they leave the stage. I am doing this by using python to generate the parameters for each individual crawler and populate those values in a Table DAT. Every frame I grab the values out of the Table DAT and use them to update the current position. Those values are then used to instance a Geometry COMP, inside of which is a simple line.

This works great for moving straight lines in a straight path, but I am interested in lines that can also turn and move in another direction. On top of that, I want a line to move like the “snake” in the game snake. Last, but not least, I would also like the line to actually be more like a leaf shape, tapered on both ends.

For example, the one of the original examples for Processing, Yellow Tail, is a bit what I am after. Here is a link to video I found of “Yellow Tail”: youtube.com/watch?v=qatIJmLkhzA

I am hoping that someone will have an idea that can point me in the right direction. I have looked into the trail CHOP, which seems like what I want, but I can’t seem to figure out how to draw a poly line that is fat in the middle and tapered on the ends.

Please help :slight_smile: Cheers

2

I am beginning to think I won’t be able to use instances to do what I want. Looking forward to hearing anything from the community.

3

In the Animation COMP you can draw your own keyframe animation, and use those channels to control size/position/rotation of any number of instances, see my posts here for a short howto:

Does that help?

4

Thanks nettoyeur for the reply. I will look into the Animation CHOP more and see if it would work well. My hope was to complete the animation by code. Thanks again for the good idea.