Following a path
Our animation will look sloppy if any one of the train cars strays even slightly from the tracks as it moves. To animate the train using the methods we learned in previous chapters, we’ll have to tweak all six location and rotation F-curves simultaneously for each train car to keep its wheels directly on the rails as the track bends.
Let’s prepare ourselves for what will assuredly be the most tedious and frustrating task we’ve done yet and add those first Location & Rotation keyframes:
- Actually, let’s not.
- Do not insert location or rotation keyframes.
- That would be ridiculous.
Can you imagine how difficult that would have been? It was already enough trouble animating the unicycle in the last chapter, and that thing only had to turn once. The Follow Path constraint is a much better way of precisely animating objects along a path, especially when that path bends and twists along multiple axes in space.
The...
