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pythonmayamaya-api

Animating a curve in Maya with Python

I am doing a keyframe scripted physics animation in Maya (with Python) and I want to show some vectors (results of the algorithm) that affect the animated objects.

To represent a vector I chose a curve:

import maya.cmds as cmds
vectorCurve = cmds.curve(d=1, p=[(x, y, z), (p, q, r)])

Then, when creating the keyframes for the animation, I do:

for i in range(300):
    #a,b,c,d,e,f values change every iteration
    cmds.move(a, b, c, vectorCurve + ".ep[0]", wd=True)
    cmds.move(d, e, f, vectorCurve + ".ep[1]", wd=True)

    cmds.setKeyframe(vectorCurve, time=i)

But when I run the script, the curves stay in their final position and do not move during the animation.

How could I set the animation keyframes for a (linear) curve correctly?

EDIT:
The curve actually has keyframes, but when I look into the keyed values in Channel Box, translate and rotate are all 0 and scale is 1 (for X, Y and Z).

Solution

  • As discussed in the comments, OP's issue was solved by specifying that control points should also be keyed:

    # Original code
cmds.setKeyframe(vectorCurve, time=i)

# Becomes
cmds.setKeyframe(vectorCurve, time=i, controlPoints=True)