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Im trying to create a circular array of planes, where the face of the plane is tracked to a point (in this case a camera). So that I can animate all the planes along the circular path and have them always face the camera.

So far I've made a simple setup of a bezier circle, with a collection of plane objects with Tracking modifiers to always face the camera - and Follow Path modifiers set to the bezier curve. The planes are then distributed using the follow path offset on each plane (0,5,10,15 etc).

Obviously there is the 'Animate Path' property, but that just sends them all off on a flat f-curve and i want to be able to ease the animation to start and stop smoothly. I could animate them around the circle by keyframing each planes offset one by one, but that seems laborious and I assume there must be a better way of achieving the same result.

The planes should keep even spacing when animated, and im using individual planes because i want each to have a unique material applied. Specifically, each plane will be a video texture (the same video), offset to play with 10 frame delay per plane iteration. Although, again, if there is a better way of achieving the same result Im all ears.

Any help very much appreciated!

Screengrab of my current setup. circular array setup

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3 Answers 3

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I think this solution should work. Hopefully I understood your question fully. geometry nodes tree, instancing each object onto the curve and rotating them

Put all your plane objects into one collection then use that domain size to set the number of points, assign each object its offset animated material there. Then just instance them on the curve and animate the CurveRotation input on the GN tree.

enter image description here

I just set it to 0 on frame 1, Tau (pi * 2) on the last frame +1 with linear interpolation to get a perfect cycle.

Final result: enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Incredible solution. Thank you so much, its exactly what i was hoping to achieve. Im not very experienced with Geo Nodes so Ive not been able to play around too much, but it seems incredibly robust and flexible as a setup. One idle query. When i opened your uploaded file, the 'Active camera' node in the vector input group is coming up as 'Undefined'. I can unplug and just choose the camera from the dropdown in the Object Info node and it seems to work just the same. But is there a fix to make it non destructive again as you had it? $\endgroup$
    – kbaws
    Commented Jul 9 at 15:47
  • $\begingroup$ Hmm that's weird. I would try just adding the active camera node again on your end and see if that works. It might be some kind of bug that ties the node to the actual camera in a way that gets lost when sharing blendfiles. Tho i really don't know for sure. $\endgroup$
    – Jakemoyo
    Commented Jul 9 at 15:58
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    $\begingroup$ Figured out where i was going wrong. It was because i was on an older version of blender... Active Camera node got added in 4.1 🙃 $\endgroup$
    – kbaws
    Commented Jul 11 at 11:23
  • $\begingroup$ Aha, well there you go. It's hard to keep up these days. $\endgroup$
    – Jakemoyo
    Commented Jul 11 at 17:50
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Maybe you can parent the planes to a circle and then just animate the rotation of the circle?enter image description here

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Use Track to object constraint with the Camera as the target.

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    $\begingroup$ Hi, thanks for the post. This site is not a regular forum, answers should be substantial, stand on their own, and thoroughly explain the solution and required steps. One liners and short tips rarely make for a good answer. If you can, edit your post and provide some more details about the procedure and how it works, perhaps add a few images illustrating some steps and final result. See How to write a good answer?, otherwise it may be converted to a comment. $\endgroup$
    – Harry McKenzie ♦
    Commented Jul 9 at 14:29
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    $\begingroup$ @HarryMcKenzie so you tried my answer and it doesn't work? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Harry? :) $\endgroup$
    – Lynx095
    Commented Jul 9 at 15:28
  • $\begingroup$ It may work but it was flagged as low quality answer. See How to write a good answer? One liners like this one rarely make for good answers. Hope you understand :) $\endgroup$
    – Harry McKenzie ♦
    Commented Jul 9 at 15:32

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