Animating the Heart and Guts

The hearts beat in sequence to circulate the blood. The dirt makes a bulge as it moves down the digestive tract.

Animating the Hearts

Open Earthworm05.max.

Unhide the Hearts group and the group of circles you used to loft them.
Rotate the Circle group so it is lined up next to the hearts.
Open both groups and select the second smallest circle:

Animate the radius of the second circle so that it enlarges at frame 7 and returns to the original radius at frame 14. In the track bar, shift clone the key at frame 14 and drag it to frame 75.

In the track view, select the Radius parameter of Circle 2 and then click Function Curves.

Straighten the function curve by selecting the 3rd and 4th keys by right-clicking on them and changing their controllers to linear.

Open the Param Curve Out-of-Range Types dialog box. Then click Cycle.

When you click OK, the function curve turns into the repeating pattern of a heart beat.

In Edit Keys mode, stagger the heart beat keys by dragging on the range bars so that the hearts will beat in sequence:

Play the animation. The hearts beat in sequence, from the right to the left:

Close the Hearts group and hide the Circles group.
Save your work.

Animating the Digestion Process

Unhide the original Epidermis, the Veins, the Guts and the origianl Worm's Food.

Select and group the Epidermis, the Hearts, the Veins and the Guts. Name the group Earthworm.

Move the Earthworm and the Worm's Food to the right, so that they are well away from the Epidermis01 and Camera01:

Create a second target camera by dragging straight up from the bottom of the viewport toward the mouth of the worm:

Press C to see the view from the camera. Then press G to hide the grid.
Right-click on the Camera02 viewport label and choose Show Safe Frame:

Drag the time slider to frame 0 and turn on the Animate button.
Drag the time slider to frame 1500.
In the Camera02 viewport, move the Earthworm group to right, past the food and out of the view:

In the track bar, select the key at frame 1500.
Right-click on the key and choose Earthworm:Position.
In the Earthworm:Position dialog box, set the In tangent to Fast.
Click on the left arrow in the upper left corner to go to key 1.
Highlight the time value of 0 and change it to frame 500.
Set the Out tangent to Slow and close the dialog box.

Play back the animation.
The motion starts at frame 500 and then gradually speeds up until the earthworm exits the Camera02 view.

Here is what the Earthworm > Transform > Position function curve looks like in the track view:

In the Front viewport, select the Worm's Food and choose Zoom Extent Selected.

Create a Displacement space warp and align it with the food.
Adjust the Length, Width and Height of the space warp so that it surrounds the food.
Position the space warp so it a little to the left of the food as you look at it from the front.
Link the Displacement space warp to the food.

Give the space warp some strength. You will adjust it later when you see how much strength is needed to displace the guts.

Bind the Earthworm group to the space warp.

Play the animation.
Watch how the food displaces the earthworm as it passes through its guts:

Make sure that the food does not break through the surface of the guts. If necessary, increase the displacement Strength or increase the number of segments in the gut.

When the food capsule emerges from the tail, animate the creation parameters of the capsule and the Strength parameters of the Noise modifier so that the casting is longer and smoother than the original capsule:

Save your work as Earthworm06.max.

Next: Rendering the Animation