Hi! i’m animating this robot arm, and i need those cables ends to follow the parts they are attached to, (the rest of the body would be soft body)
Hook modifier. Thank you!
Mmmm. using hooks solve attaching the cable ends to the robot arm, but id’like the rest of the body to react to the robot arm (collision) hasn’t the soft body some option like the cloth sim, to “pin” some vertices so those won’t get affected?
yes…
the softbody equivalent of using “pinning” is to use the softbody goal, vertex group, found in the softbody physics tab…
select the group you want to use as the pinning group, and set the default goal weight to 0… ensure softbody edges are ON, and simulate… it should make softbody systems act much like cloth physics. you can then adjust settings like the bending stiffness and damping. to approximate the effect you want…this should give the nice physical effects like swinging and follow through…
but keep in mind… this is a very overkill way of doing cables and wiring though, and personally I would use hooks, as described above., you may also find that you need to fine tune the settings so the wire doesn’t fold in on itself.
edit: just to be clear, this softbody setup would need to be parented via hooks or an armature to the separate components… IE , each end of a cable must be separately attached, and since we cant parent the pinned verts to 2 separate objects, we need to use a different method like empties, hooks or bones.
I whipped up a quick .blend so you an see what I’m trying to hint at… http://www.pasteall.org/blend/24318
wow. Thanks! i’ll check it out
you’re right. It’s Overkill. Besides, I’m making the cable as an array following a curve, and the hooks attached to the curve’s control points, so I guess a curve can’t have vertex groups to do the “pinning”… but I’m getting it done as you said, with more hooks on the appropiate places. Thank you!