Using Mograph to Clone Objects Along a Path...
The first thing you need to create is a spline that the objects will be created along. I have chosen a preset helix spline:
The next thing we need is a cloner, this is found under the mograph menu:
We will also need some items to to be cloned. For this i'll use some simple primatives, but you could use any object. Each of these items then needs to be made children of the cloner as such:
Now me need to edit some of the cloners properties to make sure it clones along the spline we created earlier. The first thing we need to change is the cloner mode to 'Object' and then the spline needs to be dragged into the 'Object' field. I also changed the 'Clones' to 'random' just to create some variation but it's not essential.
Also, if you increase the number of clones you should have something that looks roughly like this:
Ensuring the cloner is still selected, head to the mograph menu and add a 'Plain' effector to the cloner.
In the plain effectors properties, you want to turn off position by making all values '0'. Then turn on scale, uniform and absolute scale and turn the scale value down to -1. Also, change the transform space to Effector. This should make your cloned objects disappear.
The next thing we need to do is create a 'Mospline' from the morgaph menu:
We also need to edit the properties of the MoSpline to make it behave properly. We need to change the MoSpline mode to 'Spline', then head to tab titled 'Spline' and drag our original spline (helix) into the field named Source Spline.
Now we need to head back into the Plain effectors properties and under the Falloff tab we need to change the shape to 'Source', check 'Invert' and drag the MoSpline into the field 'Source Link'
Then to get the cloned objects to appear along the path, we head to the MoSpline and keyframe the 'Start' value. Head to the frame you want the animation to begin on and CTRL+Click the dot to set a keyframe, move to the final frame that you want and change the start value to 100% and key frame it again.
That is complete now. You can also add random effects to the cloner object to create a little variation within the shapes including size, rotation and position.