I’m working on a character which will use a curling blade weapon- a long sword made of flexible steel, sharp enough to cut into flesh, but flexible enough to be rolled into a tight coil. I’m kinda clueless as to how to go about it. Doesn’t look like a possibility with just bones, since it will be impossible to get it back into the shape of a tight coil. Any help in this regard would be much appreciated. This is for a game project and needs to be exported in the game engine.
Many Thanks 
Snowbound: I think that would be doable with bones rig, just add one master control, which drives all other bones along blade. Then maybe another layer of rotation controls to fine tune pose for each bone. Picture would make it easier to understand your problem.
How many rotations or how tight coil you need? I think that will dictate how many cuts your blade geo needs, and how many bones you need. If it’s for real time purpose, then probably not good idea in general to even think about splines and bend modifiers.
Also, if you make your bones get gradually shorter along the length of the blade, a coil will naturally form when they rotate. Evenly spaced bones will give you a chain that crashes into itself after the first 360 degrees…
Good luck…
Very helpful advice, Duncs! Many thanks I shall keep that in mind. My only concern now is that probably it will require a huge number of bones to make it aquire the shape of a tight coil, isn’t it? Thanks!
Thanks for the reply, Transmuter. I had been thinking of using the bend modifier earlier for smoother results though still unsure since I haven’t tried it out yet. Any specific reason why you don’t recommend it for real time purposes? Thanks again!
consider using lofted spline…you can animate the spline into a tight coil and the loft goes along with it …or use wsm . If u want to use bones, you dont need a lot…skinnuing takes care of most of it.bend modifier inappropriate…but try it anyway…
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