While working on my bachelor project Confinium, I was also responsible for animating the assets (20+) in my Bachelor project Confinium. Since each asset consists of numerous individual meshes – up to 120 per asset – animating them would take a lot of time. Therefore, I decided to automatize this process as much as possible using Cinema 4D’s Xpresso.
I created a script that would allow the animator to use one joint with a simple animation in one (or two) axis as a driver for other joints that will copy the animation of it with a time delay. So in the end, the animator has only to do the quick set up for the script with the selected joints and animate only one joint.
The script is easily adaptable to other objects since it is not limitated on the usage of joints.
Also you can control the time difference and choose the axis on which the animation should be transferred to the driven joints.
The video shows one animation test of the script: the joints of the two columns at the front are the drivers and the other ones copy the animation with a time delay.