RDG Rolling Cube aka RDGRCR
A rolling cube character.
I started with some experiments with mod() and floor() to create discrete steps from linear movements.
For those of you who don't know what this is all about - most likely my father, my mother, my sister and my girlfriend and everybody else not comming from cgSociety:
A rig is a 'setup' that defines a set of rules how a character should react on controls the rig provides.
In this case the only control is the circle.
The rule defined is: the cube is rolling over it's edges when the circle is moved.
The animator only needs to move the circle to the desired location and set a key to store this position.
The rig takes care that the cubes behaves like it should: rolling to this new position.
One of the various benefits:
The animator doesn't need to calculate the number of turns from the distance and the length of a side.
As 3dsmax doesn't provide animatable pivot points - which is the point the cube is rotating about - the rig needs to compensate this by moving the cube up and down while rotating. This results in the impression of a cube rolling over its edges.
Cuneyt Ozdas"Rolling Ball" Tutorial helped me to solve the rotation part.
And of course a "thank you" to PEN, Aearon, eek and everybody else who helped me to understand the 'true nature of script controllers and procedural interpolations - squared sins'.