How can I animate a curve guide?

Question

I'm working on an animation, where I simulate smoke in the form of a text with curve guides. I did it with the help of the following tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLt83yPT7Y

For my animation I want to use this smoke on a cigarette. But since the head moves, the start point should too. I want to keep the text in the same place. Does anyone know how to do this?

To be exact, I want the starting point of the particles to stay connected with the top of the ciggarette.

To add a bit more context I've added my slightly big file here: https://we.tl/t-tCCOpAWNK4

Thanks for the help already!!

Answer 1

Do it like this:

1. Place the particle emitter on the cigarette tip and with the emitter selected, Shift + left-click select the tip as well, so that it is now the active object (brighter outline).

   

2. Now press Ctrl+P and choose Set Parent To > Object to make the emitter a child of the tip so it moves with it.

   

3. Next, click the emitter object to select it (without the tip selected), then Shift + left-click to select the guiding curve next.

   

4. Press Tab to go into Edit Mode and select the last control point of the curve and move it to the emitter object.

   

5. With the control point still selected, press Ctrl+H and choose Hooks > Hook to Selected Object.

   

Now you can go back into Object Mode. The smoke emitter and the starting point of the smoke guide are now following the tip of the cigarette. This way the curve with the text stays completely in place, only the starting point moves. If want the text to somehow follow the movement of the cigarette as well let me know.

Just a tip for the next time: instead of uploading a large file it would have been sufficient to give us a stripped down version with just the cigarette (tip), emitter and curve.