Accessing Point Data of an Animated Bezier Curve Through Python API I am currently working on the rig for a simple robotic character. This character has tube-like arms which bend and deform smoothly using the curve modifier. This works great, but I had to figure out a way to keep the robot's hands attached to the right point at the end of the arm and to stay perpendicular to the arm path. I wrote a python driver to accomplish this which yielded great results as seen here.

However, the problem is that as far as I can tell Blender only updates the coordinates of Bezier Curve Handles when in edit mode, which means as soon as I attempt to animate the limb using shape-keys the hand is frozen at the last edit mode point regardless of driver dependency updates.. You can see the value I am using for the driver not changing during animation here.

So my question is essentially, where can I get the animated spline data used for object mode? If this is impossible, what are my options. 

Thanks
Could you perhaps solve your problem by using Hooks?


Edit the curve
select the endpoint you want controlled by the empty.
Ctrl-h and Hook to New Object


Now moving the freshly-created empty drags the curve control point around.

It is also possible to hook the control points to bones in an armature, or maybe just select the hand and the curve and hook the control point to the hand object.