Help with many followers

[lynxlab]

Hello,
I am still working on animating an array of approximately 100 satellite dishes in lightwave. I can use the motion modifier "Follower" to have all the dishes follow the azimuth and elevation of a null. The problem is I have to go through and set the follower up by hand for each dish. I wonder if there is a better way. I tried creating a scene which contained only the dish and I rigged everything up including making it follow a null. The problem is that when I then load objects from scene into the big scene, all the nulls get loaded as well and each dish only follows its own null. I can then go in and manually change each dish to follow just one null, but this is a pain. Is there any way to streamline this process? Perhaps with the spreadsheet? I've tried everything I can think of.
Thanks in advance,
Glenn

[SplineGod]

It would be much faster IMO to do this with a simple expression rather then use follower. The reason is that you can select every dish and go into the graph editor.
Hit the l key to throw every channel for every selected object into the channel bin.
Once there you can hit the @ key to filter out everything but the rotational channels. Now create a favorite set.
Click on the filter button and type *n.H*
This will leave just the Heading channels. Again make a new favorite set.
Select your original favorite set. Now filter the Pitch channels and make a new favorite set. Do the same for the bank channels.
This just takes a minute or so to do.

In the expression editor click on new and name the expression.
Click next to where it says Value and delete the word Value.
Right click on the heading channel of your 'leader" object and select "append to expression"
Now go back and multi select all your heading channels for the rest of the dishes in the channel bin.
Click on Append.
Now all those channels are following the leaders heading channels.
Repeat this for any other channels that need to follow.

[Gabe]

You can also copy and paste Modifiers like 'Follower'. When you copy and paste 'Follower' it copies all the settings. It wouldn't take too long to do it that way. Probably be quicker than learning expressions.

[lynxlab]

Originally posted by Gabe
You can also copy and paste Modifiers like 'Follower'. When you copy and paste 'Follower' it copies all the settings. It wouldn't take too long to do it that way. Probably be quicker than learning expressions.

Do you mean copy and past the object which has the follower applied to it? I've tried this without success because there is a heirarchy involved. I have however recently found the command "Clone Heirarchy" which looks promising. The other consideration is that I am trying to do as much as possible from an LScript (especially positioning and rigging the 100 dishes) to make things easier. Thanks for the suggestions!
Glenn

[Gabe]

No. Here's what I mean. Go ahead and setup your master scene with the dish and rig. Don't worry about the null and 'Follower' plugin yet though. Then using 'load objects from scene' setup you hundred dishes. Then add a null and add follower to just one of the dishes. Then right click the 'follower' modifer in the motion panel and choose copy. Then just select your other dishes one by one and paste the modifier in the motion panel. Really simple and fairly quick.

[SplineGod]

If you had like 10 dishes or something I might consider follower but if you have 100 or so I would go with the expression.
It would take couple of minutes to set up and you can multiselect all your channels and apply the expression to them at the same time. :)