Mexican wave setup

[hemmster]

Hello All,

I'm have a wall of square tiles. I want to rotate them 180 degrees in-turn to see the reverse in a mexican wave type effect. Ideally, I want to have a couple of nulls to control the time taken and the spread.

I've tried expressions but can't do it without saying (Time-.1) (Time-.2) etc. on each column. And that would make adjusting the spread tedious. Anyone know an easier way to do this?

Thanks

[BlueApple]

I’ve never tried this cascading method in LightWave, but I have done it in Flash. The syntax escapes me, but here is a possible technique:

The idea would be to use the name of the object as your offset. If your objects are named cube1, cube2, cube3, cube4, etc. you may be able to extract that number and use it in your expression. So, instead of having to type (Time-.1), (Time-.2), etc. you can write (Time-( Number(this.object.substr(4, 1)))/10) for all of them.

The syntax I am using is ActionScript, but there is likely similar stuff in Lightwave’s expression language. The things you want to do are:

1.Find a substring of the object name and grab it. This will give you a digit, but it’s a string value at this point.
2.Convert that string value to a number.
3.Divide by 10. This will make your 2 become .2.

A non-scripting technique that I have used in LightWave goes something like this. In Layout, just keframe about ten of your objects and offset them manually. Parent them all to a null, save and clear the scene. Now, load items from scene a few times and manually reposition the nulls so your objects are laid out as you need them. Grab the keys in groups of ten to offset them again. This isn’t a very modular approach, but if you’re committed to your timing it’s clean and easy.

[hemmster]

Thanks Adam,

I was going to use the position of the column as an offset but I have no idea how to reference the object an expression is attached to. I don't think you can but I'm not that good with expressions. Will try the nestesd keyframe approach.

[SplineGod]

On my displacements and endomorphs DVD I show a method that is extremely simple and uses no expressions at all. Heres a quickie example:
http://www.vfxcast.com/media/1437/Tile-array-rotation/
Youll need to register here first to be able to view the video:
http://www.vfxcast.com