Hello all. Not sure how to go about going about doing this so i need someones help please. I have saved an animation of a sphere following a path constraint along a conveyor belt before falling down a shaft which i have then copied the sphere and repeated at different intervals. Up until now i have been doing this manually and i plan to have quite a few spheres following this animation. So i have been looking into the motion mixer which i have been learning the basics of with a biped. I have saved the sphere animation but i am Not quite sure how to go about using it with the motion mixer, i impoted the animation onto a track and moved it to frame 450 where i want it to resume but in the viewport the sphere still stays down the shaft in the position it was last transformed. Any help appreciated please. Thanks.

Ok so now i got the animation loaded in and moving for the frames it is not linked to the dummy and path constraint but it doesn’t move at all for the time it is linked and it doesn’t repostion itself back to where it started in the animation. All i want to do is loop the animation from at different time intervals but the more i try and animate with 3d max the more frustrating it is becoming. i tried to copy the keys and move them in the curve editor but that doesnt work either and the dope sheet just freezes up on me when i try and copy time. any help please on this ??.

Ok so i managed to copy the keys using the curve editor but i had to auto key it back to it’s original position where it first started. Foregive me if i don’t understand this but i thought that when you copied the xyz transform key it should be in the original position as the first copy ?..also i have a push modifier applied to the sphere gets bigger over time so i apllied a point cache to it but i can’t seem to copy the keys over for this modifier, i have tried copying the push keys to the new position but that doesn’t seem to work either. Does this mean i have to key in the values again by hand ?.

Use the magic key button at frame ZERO and copy that key along with the rest of them to get it to start over at the begining. You will have to put it in twice to get the sphere to wait at the end or begining which ever you want. I sometimes move them WAY off camera in one frame to make things disapear and reapear. Or use the out of range button on the curve editor if you want it to “loop”...(help me out if I am representing this wrong.)

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

I can’t help you with the Push modifier part. I was just trying to help you out with getting it to “loop” the key frames. With your object selected and the slider at frame zero press the button in the lower right that looks like a key. This will set a starting state key for all the parameters. Now copy that key to where you need the sphere to be at the start again. You need to add another “master” key on the previous frame to the one you copy or your object will slowly migrate back to the beginning instead of jumping there. That is the part I am having trouble explaining.

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

Take a look at the keys for each of these…
Ball 4 you will have to look at the dope sheet to see the added loop.
Sorry if you know all about this but it sounded like you had to do it manually.

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

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rollyballs_1.zip

yeah sorry i should have said, i am using max 2009 with the hotfixes and service packs installed.

Still aint solved this, maybe it’s something simple i am missing i don’t know as i am only just starting using path constraints, i have uploaded a simple scene of a ball linked and constrained to a path for anyone to look at, i have tried to clone the keys and move them to a different frame but when i do the sphere starts half way through the path again, don’t know what i am doing wrong but any help on this would stop me from developing computer rage and throwing my computer out of the window !!!.

	Attachment
test_upload_scene02.zip

There’s a couple of problems with what you’re trying to do.

Cloning the Keys (by shift-dragging them in the trackbar) does NOT clone the Link Constraints. So the sphere will remain linked to the dummy at the original frames (20 to 70). You would have to create new links at 120 and 170.

Allied to that, the dummy does not re-traverse the path at the correct time for the cloned keys, so the sphere will remain stationary for that part of the timeline. You would have to clone the keys for the dummy as well.

Even doing the above will not solve the problems, unfortunately.
I’m not entirely certain about the best way to deal with this - any animation gurus care to jump in here?

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Thanks for the input guys, looks like i will have to key the new positions in manually then for now, just been looking into the help files on controllers and i can’t find no solution there either.

Yeah i can loop the path back to the begging again, i used the parameters out of range to do that but the it makes no difference when i clone the keys. Just been looking up in the help files on controllers which is something i never looked up before still relativley new to this animation business, but i think the answer may lay in assigning a block controller somewhere as it says you can assign different tracks into blocks and use them again anywhere in time, and it has a slave dialog to use objects as master and slaves. Will look into this a bit more over the next few days and see what it all about.