Animate the Effect Using the Custom Rig

The rig is essentially  complete, but for the animation to behave  the way the director wants, you’ll need to fine-tune  the animation curves created  by the set-driven key. This way, the position of the spark  is in line with  the color  of the ramp, and the rate of the spark  emission  is a little more  elegant.

Keep in mind  that  the director will want  to tweak  the look  of the effect quite  a bit; the rig is designed  to reduce  the amount of work  it takes  to change  the animation in the future. The rig takes  a few more  steps to set up, but the payoff  comes later when you have to constantly change  the animation to match  the director’s vision.

1.     shot requires that  the light on the sign start  on frame  320 and end around frame  360.  Set the Time Slider to frame  320.  Move  the lightControlHandle all the way to the left. Hold  the mouse  over the Translate x channel  in the Channel Box; right-click and choose  Key Selected.

2.    Move  the Time Slider to 360,  move the lightControlHandle all the way to the right,  and set a second  keyframe.

3.     Switch to the ShotCam camera  in the viewport. Rewind and play the scene. It’s   a bit lackluster at the moment, so it’s time to do some tweaking.

4.    Switch to Perpective view in the viewport, and zoom in on the sign. Set the Time Slider Range so that it starts at 300 and ends at 380; thisway,you don’t have to sit through whole animation the whole animation every time yaou review it.

5.    It many be bit hard to see the emiter’s position and progression of the red color as it moves along the length of the glass tube. You can make things a bit easier by simply constraining a locator to the Outliner, select spark Emitter, and CTRL+ select locator1. Switch to the Animation menu set, and choose Contrain c Point c Options. In the Outliner,

6.    Scrub along the Timeline. You should see the locator move along the curve. To fis the timing, you can work with the Graph Editor