Winding Cord or Rope onto a Drum

Resources Tutorials, Tips and Tricks
1

I have been wrestling with this problem since starting work on my clock mechanism. Finally I have a solution I am happy with and have decided to share it here just in case others find it useful. There is a quick animation below, just a Blender Screen Capture. The tutorial is on my web pages and in line with my other effort, is a written one with pictures and text.

So, the tutorial is here:

http://www.clcokmender.uk just go to the Tutorials Page.

And the animation is here:

I hope this is useful.

Cheers, Clock.

2

It is. I’ve been thinking about how one would accomplish this. Very cool, thanks for sharing.

3

Thank you. Your kind words are appreciated - let me know if I could improve the tutorial - I am not very practiced at this yet.

Cheers. Clock.

4

I’ve used that tutorial for a bezier based rope, and I’ve also used the following tutorial to make an array type rope:
http://vimeo.com/3940178

not sure which i like better.

The array/path type rope has the virtue of not requiring you to adjust the iterations based on length, it dynamically adds iterations based on path length, but requires you to dial in the settings where it merges the vertices from one iteration to the next.

I also thought it was interesting @2:25 where he rotates the strand circles to align the normals. Using the spin modifier it’s way easier now, since you only have to rotate the top circle along the Z, then the spin modifier mirrors it appropriately for every other strand, so you don’t have to wrestle with the math like he did. I usually make 5-6 strand ropes so I wouldn’t want do deal with the math for that.

5

Here’s the rope rendered, instead of the screen capture, I cooked it overnight, so it was not available when I made my last post.

Cheers. Clock.

6

I have now added a page to the tutorial to show you how to do the rope trick in my previous post, you can also download the blend file of this from that page. Enjoy!

Cheers, Clock.

7

Great video. That said, the perfectionist in me is noticing that the rope is just getting longer, and not moving. The rope texture, bumps, or what ever you want to call it, stays stagnant. Just my two cents.

Lee

8

That was exactly what I tried to achieve, i.e. the rope not twisting as it grew - I will try next to move the rope so it looks like the rope is being pulled out of the box as my next development. Thanks for encouraging me to get on with this, this might take a day or two as I have another project on just now.

Thanks for your kind comments, Clock.