cables with gravity effect

# 1 06-02-2003 , 09:48 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Posts: 11

hi guys, i need your help on this one, but first i must apologize for my english (not my mother language). The problem is that i need an electric cable with real gravity effect, below is a list of ingredients i use in my scene:

- 2 locators (to control ends of the cable)
- 1 NURBS curve with 6 CVs (to deform the cable)
- 6 clusters, 1 on each CV of the curve
- 1 NURBS cylinder with lots of spans for good deformation
- 1 wire deformer (put on cylinder and curve and Local influence = 1)
- 1 poly floor (passive rigid body)
- 2 little poly cubs (active rigid body)
- 1 gravity field

To deform the cylinder i`ve decide to use an wire deformer, so i`ll use that curve for this. To produce the deformation i`ve put a cluster on every CV of the curve (which is wire deformer). Now i`ve start to point constrain the clusters like below:

cluster_1 constrained to locator_1 (constraint value = 1)
cluster_2 constrained to cluster_1 and cluster_3 (constraint value = 0.5 for both)
cluster_3 constrained to cluster_2 and cluster_4 (constraint value = 0.5 for both)
cluster_4 constrained to cluster_3 and cluster_5 (constraint value = 0.5 for both)
cluster_5 constrained to cluster_4 and cluster_6 (constraint value = 0.5 for both)
cluster_6 constrained to locator_2 (constraint value = 1)

to use the gravity effect i`ve point constrained cluster 3 and 4 like below:

cluster_3 constrained to cube_1 (constraint value = 0.5)
cluster_4 constrained to cube_2 (constraint value = 0.5)

well every thing looks good but i want to be able to make the NURBS curve to have a fixed length, i mean if i move locator_1 up in Y i want cube_1 to follow according to curve length instead of stretching the curve, so i need to limits the gravity effect on the cube_1 in some way. Now the cubes don`t stop until then reach the floor and that`s not good.

any help, suggestion, comment will be greatly appreciated.

Quote

# 2 07-02-2003 , 03:01 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Philippines

Posts: 136

RageCGI gave me a link to this plug-in in Highend3d.com. It works really well. I have to play with it a bit more, though. It creates a fixed length curve.
When you get your set-up to work, I'd like to see it! Enjoy!

https://www.highend3d.com/maya/plugi...=animation#2125

Quote

# 3 07-02-2003 , 05:00 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: MELville

Posts: 1,100

Calvin, the URL is not right.. user added image

here it is

For Maya 4.5
https://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d...p&file_id=2125

For Maya 4.0
https://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d...ip&file_id=866

-Emo

Last edited by Emo; 07-02-2003 at 05:02 AM.

Quote

# 4 07-02-2003 , 04:39 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Posts: 11

tkx guys ... i`ll reply when i`m done user added image

anyway .... any help will be appreciated

Quote

# 5 07-02-2003 , 09:36 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

Good luck!

Looks like you are on the right track!

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

Quote

# 6 08-02-2003 , 12:08 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Posts: 11

well not quite ... i mean not with that plugin, is not what i need ... but i`ve solve the problem user added image

i`ll try to simplify the process e a little bit and i`ll put everything on a script

Quote

# 7 08-02-2003 , 12:15 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: Taunton, UK

Posts: 128

i would use soft bodies

Quote

# 8 08-02-2003 , 12:59 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Posts: 11

i`m using springs ... works better then soft bodies

Quote

# 9 11-02-2003 , 07:22 PM

Moderator
Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: London, UK

Posts: 2,800

try my tute (right here on simplymaya user added image

) that does it with dynamics you might need to do some tweaking but you can make a cable that will act as though it's got gravity pulling it.

https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...?threadid=3872

Technical Director - Framestore

Currently working on: Your Highness

IMDB

Quote