I am looking for a way to comb meshes, or at least curves or strings of edges, the way one can comb particle hair. With particle hair, when you comb any given vertex, it pulls the others with it, but it does not change the length of the string (does not change the length of edges between vertexes.) A similar tool for meshes would be very helpful for creating folds in fabric, or for working with polygon hair. Proportional edit sort of works, but it doesn’t pull connected vertices with it, so it ends up distorting the mesh.
Is there a tool like this, or a way to achieve such an effect? If not, how do people go about adjusting shapes that need to stay static? Say, bend a piece of fabric or paper without changing the total area of it?