Very frequently during animation, an object may need to move along a specific spline path. When needing to animate an object like this; use the Align to Spline expression.
Step 1: The first thing that you need to create is an object to animate along a path. Create a Pyramid object and change its Orientation to +Z.
Step 2: Now draw out a spline path for the object to be animated along. Create a B-Spline like in the image shown (Objects=>Create Spline=>B-Spline).
Step 3: In the Object Manager, make sure to select the Pyramid object then add an Align to Spline tag.
Note: If you are not using R9, the path to the Align to Spline expression is found by going to File=>New Expression=>Align to Spline Expression.
Step 4: Drag and drop the Spline object into the Spline Path field in the Attributes Manager.
Step 5: The object will remain at the beginning of the spline. In order to animate the object along the spline, you need to animate the Position parameter. Make sure the Timeslider is at frame 0 and create a keyframe for the Position parameter.
Now scrub the Timeslider to frame 90 and create a keyframe for the Position parameter with a value of 100%.
Step 6: If you enable the Tangential option in the Attributes Manager, the Z-axis of the object will align with the spline. This will make the object rotate with the spline as it animates.
