If you have a complete a small bit of 3D animation you have probably approach across key framing.
You can animate virtually everything with key frames, but if it come to vehicles moving around and especially around curves it is extremely hard to get the car or spacecraft or whatever every one the time at the exact right position facing the right method every one the time, so your object ends up sliding around… But present is a way to animate this, a very easy way actually. It’s called “Motion Path”-animation.
So, come again? do we need for this? Well, a spacecraft so as to we are going to animate of route:
(I am completely aware that it is a very awful one, but it will do the job 😉 plus that’s every one that counts …)
Next we need a only some obstacles that the spacecraft is going to fly through, now to create it a bit mire interesting…
What we need to do at the present is make a curve along the way we want the spacecraft to go, meaning through the loops in this case. It would be most excellent if you created the curve in the direction your spacecraft is going to fly already, but if you for a few reason did it the wrong method around you can use [Edit Curves] -> [Reverse Curve Direction].
Now we need to select the Object(s) we desire to and to animate first, plus then the curve we want it/them to move the length of last (To select multiple Objects hold down the [Shift]-Key …). This order is very significant for otherwise the whole thing won’t work!
Now, set your time slider on the bottom to show precisely the amount of time you desire the animation to be, so for instance 1-300 or something.
After that, in the Animation-menu, go [Animate] -> [Motion Paths] -> [Attach to Motion Path].
Your Spacecraft is now next the curve you set up earlier.
If, now as in my case the spacecraft is facing the wrong direction, there is an easy way to fix this.
Click on your object plus in the Attribute Editor there should be a tag called ?motionPath1?. Select it and now you are able to edit quite a few things
To fix the direction your object is facing now play around with the “Front Axis” and “Up Axis”-boxes until it is positioned right. But be careful: The two boxes should NOT both show the similar letter, X for instance, for it might look right when the animation is not running, but it you play back your scene, Maya suddenly gets confused plus the result looks quite weird.
If your Object is positioned right except is upside down or looking back instead of looking the way it is flying you can check the “Inverse Up” and “Inverse Front”-boxes until everything is right. This previous step is a lot of try plus error actually 😉 Good luck animating! The result should look something like to: