Speed operator -> Direction -> Spline

[TubeSmokeGuy]

Hi!

Can you please make, that we can pick a spline as direction in the speed operator?
This could be a simple alternative to the more complex "Path follow"-operator workflow.

A speed value, a spline for direction and the operator timing set to continious and thats it.
By animating the speed value you can easiely accellerate or slowdown the particles on the path.

This also relates to my bug/issue thread with the path follow operator here:
http://forum.tyflow.com/thread-1805.html

What do you think?

[tyFlow]

I'm not sure why the Path Follow operator wouldn't be sufficient here. Just set your path and set the timing to entry....that would be equivalent to what the Speed operator does to particles.

[TubeSmokeGuy]

I'm not sure why the Path Follow operator wouldn't be sufficient here. Just set your path and set the timing to entry....that would be equivalent to what the Speed operator does to particles.

What I want to achiev is continious keyframeable control over the speed while the particles stay exactly on the path (or keep their initial distance to the path).
So my consideration was setting the timing of the speed operator to continious and animate the speed value while having the path as proper direction reference, could be the solution.

F.E.
From frame 1 to 50 speed should go up from 0 to 10 and then it remain constant at 10 until frame 300. Now from frame 300 to 325 I want to slowdown the speed from 10 to 5. And so on.

I tried it with the path follow op. But as I discribed here, I got the issue with jerky movement on animated velocity of the follow parameter if the path follow op was setuped to keep the particles exactly on track.