Hi Folks,

Once again I need your help. I’ve got a Mesh which consists of several Helixes with regular Tubes in between. They are all welded together, so it is one long Mix of Helix and tubes. In Animation, the amount of Turns in each Helix needs to be changed (from 0 Turns, up to 50 e.g.).

First I attached bones to each helix, but strechting the bones only leads to stretch the Helix - not reducing the Turns.
In another attempt, I took a regular Tube with a Path-Deform-Modifier and a helix-spline, so I had good control of the Mesh, by changing the splines-parameters. But since my Mesh consists of several individual helixes, I cant use it cuz i can only select 1 spline in the deformation-modifier.

Do you have any ideas of how accomplish this? If u didnt get what i mean, I’ll be happy to add some pictures.

thx
Criss

Is this like a DNA double helix, with connections inbetween? I did something like this before, but I cna’t find the thread about it.
But what I did was create something like a ladder shape, two parallel verticals with horizontals adjoining between. I then added a Twist modifier to twist the “ladder” into a double helix. The twist angle parameter controls the amount of turns and may be animated.

Hey Samab,

again its u trying to help me:) thank u very much already. Unfortunately its no DNA. (but I know what u mean, i did DNAs a couple of times too). I Hope the picture below makes it more clear:
1 Mesh with Helices and Tubes in it (in this case just 1 tube and 2 helices, but could be more) and the helices need to be untwisted into a tube, and then twisted back into a helix.

	Attachment

I’m not able to test this right now, but one idea is to use a Morpher to change the shape from twisted to non-twisted. I could be applied to either the mesh or the splines, whichever works best.

The idea is nice, but when i tried it, all helix-turns appear/disappear at the same time in the horizontal axis. It doesnt look natural.(see in picture)
The Animation should be more like the Turns are getting less and less, until Zero Turns are left.

thx again for your help and ideas

	Attachment

I’m not sure it’s what you want, but try the attached file.
I used two helices, two dummies with a path constraint,
and a hose (extended primitive). It’s animated on 50 frames.

	Attachment
connect_helix.zip

Thanks. In fact i thought of a hose too in the beginning, but then tried to avoid it cuz i cant modify the detail-look of the meshes, for example a noise modifier, to make it more distorted. but anyway, i think this is the best result we can get here. thank you very much again for your idea.

cheers criss

You could try putting the Morpher above an animated Vol Select with Soft Selection.