Animating the Worm Squirming

Earthworms move by stretching out and anchoring tiny bristles in the soil. Then they pull their tails toward their head ends. 

Open Earthworm04.max.

Click Zoom Extents All to center the earthworm and its food in all four viewports.

In the Top viewport, zoomout and pan to so the objects appear in the upper left part of the viewport.

Create a target camera by dragging from the lower right corner of the viewport towards the hearts:

Open the Render dialog box. In the Output Size area, set the Width to 600 and the Height to 200. Then click Close.

Press C to see the views from each camera and G to hide the grid.
Right-click on the Camera01 viewport label and choose Show Safe Frame.

Center the objects in the blue safe frame by panning the viewport:

In the status bar, click the Time Configuration button.

In the Time Configuration dialog box, enter 1500 for the animation Length. Then click OK.

Click Zoom Extents All.

In the Front viewport, select the Epidermis and choose Edit > Clone. Choose Copy and OK:

In the same way, create a copy of the Worm's Food
Select the original Worm's Food, Epidermis, veins, hearts and guts.
Open the Display panel and hide them from view. Only the copies should be visible now.

Select Epidermis01.
In the Modify panel, remove the Normal modifier from the modifier stack.
Render the Epidermis to see it how it looks.

Apply an XForm modifier to Epidermis01. The XForm modifier, which is found by clicking the More button, has no parameters. Instead, it is a container for all transforms that you apply while the sub-object button is turned on. By placing the transforms in the XForm modifier, you ensure that they will be evaluated in a certain order, and that they can easily be removed.

Choose the Move tool and restrict the movement to X.
Turn on the Animate button and drag the time slider to frame 0.

Zoom out of the Front viewport.
In the Front view, move the Epidermis01 object to the left about one length.

Drag the time slider to frame 300.
Move the Epidermis01 back to its original position in front of the Worm's Food.

Play the animation.
The Epidermis01 object moves from left to right. At frame 300, it stops in front of the Worm's Food.

Choose the Squash and Scale tool from the main toolbar.
Drag the time slider to frame 50.
Squash the worm in Y so that it expands to about twice its normal length.

Advance the time slider to frame 100.
Squash the worm in the opposite manner, so that it shrinks in X but gets thicker in Y.

Repeat this process at frames 150, 200, 250 and 300.
The worm stretches out and squashes back into itself three times and comes to rest in front of the food.

Unhide the original Epidermis.
Squash Epidermis01 until it matches the shape of the original Epidermis.

Turn off the Animate button and play back the animation.
The Epidermis01 object moves and stretches until it reaches the food.
Watch the animation in the Camera01 view.

If you want to get a more dramatic effect, orbit the camera until the Epidermis01 object is visible at frame 0:

Optional: Displacement Mapping

If you apply a displacement map and a Displacement Approximation modifier to the Epidermis01 object, the profile will look even more segmented. But because this procedure adds polygons at render time, it also causes the rendering to slow down. So consider these next steps strictly optional:

1. Apply a Displace Approximation modifier to Epidermis01 and set the Subdivision Method to Regular.
2. In the Material Editor, drag a copy of the Epidermis material to a new sample slot.
3. Name the material Epidermis01 and apply it to the Epidermis01 object.
4. In the maps rollout of each of the 3 submaterials, drag an instance of the gradient map from the Diffuse map channel to the Displacement map channel. Set the Displacement Amount to 20.
5. Render to see the result:

When you are done, hide everything in the scene.

Save your work as Earthworm05.max.

Next: Animating the Hearts and Guts