I have this rig with moving parts, I want to attach a cable to it. I want it to look like the cable can flex. The moving parts don’t move a lot, so the cable won’t have to move too much itself either.
Thank you.
There are many ways to achive it. I would do it with cloth simulation. Pin the beggining and end of the cable to the moving parts. You can use hook or armature for that. the cloth sim will do the rest for you. But get ready for thousands of tweeking the sim properties before you get it right.
You can also do a rig with bones in the wire and some constraints (like IK) that would move it when the parts are moving too.
How can I do it with IK? I don’t want to use cloth sim b/c this should be simpler.
make a chain of bones inside the wire, you can also use bendy bones for a better result. Add the extra bone at the end and instead of parenting it to the bone below, parent it to the moving part. It’s going to be the IK controller. when this bone is selected in pose mode. SHIFT + CLICK on the bone below then CTR+SHIFT+C to add bone constraint and choose ‘Invert Kinematic’.
something like that should apear in the bone constraint panel. Now tweak the Chain Length value so it matches the lenght of the bones in the wire
it should work like this https://blenderartists.org/uploads/default/original/4X/d/7/1/d71f98b3cef8f6e6be9a02000f073b9dd85f46f1.mp4
just parent the IK controller to the bone that moves that big arm or whatever it is
oh you mean how to mahe the mesh follow bones?
if its a curve convert it to a mesh. then select it and the armature, make sure the armature is the active one. ctr+P and click armature deform with automated weights
Nice, that works. Looks a little weird when stretched out? How can I fix that?
I tried removing a bone but that seems to have made it worse.
Kinda got it now, just smoothed the weights.
I’d just do this with a curve object, or with a curve-modified object.
You might find https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/150637/how-to-create-wire-between-objects/150670#150670 useful.