"Sticky Hand" effect in the physics engine?

Hello all,

I’ve been wondering if there is a way to have an object stick to a surface in the physics engine. It looks like friction alone isn’t cutting it. I’d like to make an animation of a piece of tape or something else sticky, and create an effect where the object peels off the wall.

I have an Idea of using weighted vertex groups and the “anim all” add-on to animate a changing goal as the object is slowly peeled, but that requires a good bit of manual work. Just checking here if anyone has an idea they’d like to share as well. Thanks!

I don’t know if you can do it with the Physics engine, but you can do it like this:


And here is the blend file:

tape.blend (517 KB)

You must enable “Autorun Python Scripts” in User Prefs => File tab, as there is a scripted expression driver in there. Just press Play to see it working.

There are some objects on the hidden layer 2 that will show you how it works… :wink:

This is all done with standard Blender objects/techniques. Let me know if this is what you had in mind. :eyebrowlift:

Cheers, Clock.

Hey, that was really cool! The Hooks and Paths gave a nice effect there.

I was wondering if I could make the tape object appear a bit rubbery, stretching as it peels. I know that while the physics engine is a great tool for creating the effect, there are still some limitations present. I think I’ll use your scene as a starting point and post my attempt here a little later.

Thanks for your help!

You could try simply scaling it up along it’s length and maybe scaling it down a little across its width as you “peel” it them let it return to 1 scale a short time after that… I think that would work. You can set the scales in the Transform boxes, so it scales on its own axes rather than on Global axes.

Cheers, Clock.