I have built an animation sequence in which a panel scales from 0 to 100% as it moves along a spline. I added that to a radial cloner and offset the Y axis to create one loop of a spiral. I then added that to a linear cloner that created a stack in which the spirals form a continuous helix. I then used a Plain Effector to trigger the animation so the helix builds up in sequence.
Project is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ih5nluojrw826b/Tier_Cloner_v4.c4d.zip?dl=0
Everything works great except the Plain Effector has no effect on the Align-to-Spline tag animation. It runs ahead of the helix builder so that all the panels are in their final position by the time the scale animation is applied. So the only animation is the panel scale.
I’ve been digesting EJ’s “walking through fields” tutorial and the one thing that stood out was he baked his dynamics before adding the effectors. Do I have to bake the Align-to-Spline in order to get it to work? I would like to be able to change the panel size and helix offset for different effects, and baking that would lock everything in one configuration.
At one point in my stuggles I was able to achieve the desired effect (most likely by baking everything), but when I went back to try and repeat it (so I would know what it was that I did that worked) I couldn’t get it to work again. So I feel like there’s a simple answer that I’m missing with all the levels of cloners and effectors.