Digital Arts Front :: Forum - reactor Rope....any alternative?

Forum Index - Modeling - reactor Rope....any alternative?

There are 5 replies to this topic

-desade2009
Member

3 years ago

i want to create cables between two objects (for example, the router and the back of the cpu-cabinet)....i've created the plug-heads already, and put them in place, just need to put renderable splines connecting them....i encountered 2 problems
a) when i tried Nurbs splines, there is no reactor Rope modifier available for it...
b) when i tried standard Line, applied a reactor rope, and added it to a rope collection, and added all the remaining objects to a RB collection, it doesn't work, saying "object [blah] can no longer be a rigid body"....i found this to be because the objects are in Groups......
(and the Line spline isn't as convenient as the nurbs spline for quick, smooth-flowing curves - but that's not a problem, merely an inconvenience)
is there any other way i can do this? i don't know squat when it comes to reactor

Cogito, Ergo Sum

-Tyson
Senior Member

3 years ago

what are you trying to achieve with the animation? reactor can be good but I'm not that sure about its rope dynamics it can be more stable and easier to deal with if you rig the splines with linked x-form modifiers connected to dummies and put spring controllers on the dummies. or if you are just wanting to "drape" the cords over your scene so they look natural you can use sim cloth and a long three sided cylinder with loads of height segments. the three sides wont collapse and after you turbosmooth it will look like a decent cable. Just select the end you want to hold still with soft selection then apply sim cloth.
sim cloth can be downloaded for free from [Link to www.maxplugins.de]

-desade2009
Member

3 years ago

yeah i'm looking to make the cable encounter physical objects, and thus look natural..... i was thinking of the cloth modifier also (which, i'm guessing, will be similar to sim cloth?).... but the ends of the cables will have to pass around and over several objects, and so will i have to edit the cylinder's mesh for each cable?
or do you think all this is overkill? if yes, tell me if the cable below is sufficiently realistic....i just used a nurbs curve, and used 3d-snap, and autogrid, to make sure it atleast flowed along the table

Cogito, Ergo Sum

-cdballew
Moderator

3 years ago

I think you'd be better off using a line and move the verts around. You can clone that line and change it around and increase/decrease the thickness.
I don't know how your cables are, but none of my cables lay flat. They come up off the desk at points and are generally not fluidly curved like rope or cloth would be.

Chris

-desade2009
Member

3 years ago

that looks pretty good chris.... yeah the cables aren't supposed to be fluidly curved...will try using just line then... but for me, there's little point in cloning it, cos each line is in a whole different 3d space, and i'd have to change each of the vertices, so i'd be better remodelling each cable