orb going around object with spiral path

I forgot. the .dae file is to spec. what I mean by this. EVERY box in Blender 2.5 is a meter in the real world. I did all the measurements and calculations, so it is to exact spec. so if it comes out small, this is the reason.

math expression or an LFO or an interpolator can be used (groups of 3 of them) to make a helix path in 3d space. is that what you're looking for?

I think it will work. will have to play with the settings

To make a simple spiral, you just make a circle and slowly decrease the radius. For a circle, you need 2 LFOs for your object's x + y position, with the same period + amplitude. Make one sin, the other cos. Then as I said, decrease the amplitude.

i have been messing around with planetary orbits lately. not sure what type of effect your going for. here is an example of using pure physics to create orbiting particles around your pillar. you can actually get some really interesting results by messing with the step times and init velocities etc... not sure if this is correct yet or not as i have not finished the assignment but at least heuristically this effect might do what you want.

Chris and chris are right on. Mixing a sin and cos lfo with the same amplitude and period will make a circle. Increasing the amplitude of just one (in relation to the other) creates an oval. (sometime a long time back cwright pointed out the lfo sin/cos thing to me)

So, you could connect the results to x and y, then use an interpolate or lfo to manipulate z, to have it maintain the circle path and go "down" an object. Decreasing amplitude, as Chris stated, makes it wind in 2d.

thanks for the help. i am playing around right now. I wanted to give link to a video of what I am working on. want to reproduce all these graphics, but on a smaller scale. in the video you will see an example of the orbs going around the pillars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0XKmU5hF5s