Animating a necklace without hinge constraints?

#1

Hi everyone,

I’m still pretty new to modelling and have been stuck on this problem for a while. I’ve modelled dog tags on a chain and want to animate it falling. I’ve tried applying hinge constraints and then gravity to make it fall into the correct shape. However, when I press play, it freezes until I resign to the fact that it won’t unfreeze and I force quite the programme. I’m guessing it could have to do with the amount of constraints I’ve applied and my iMacs ability. Does anyone know if there is a different way to animate a necklace without using so many hinge constraints?

My computer specs are
Processor 3.2 GHz intel core 5
AMD Radeon R9 M380 graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

#2

You could do it with nCloth with “use polygon shells” enabled, eg:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-F476A1F4-9944-4C46-9CBD-DD4FB8BAA9E0-htm.html

Bullet might be better at it since these are all rigid objects, but I haven’t done much with it.

#3

Hey,
I would create a polygon ribbon where each face is exactly the size of a bead. Make that an ncloth and set the collision width to the size of the bead. Then wrap deform the geo of the dog tag to the ncloth ribbon. You probably have to play with the ncloth parameters to get the right sim. No need for constraints then. Maybe for the tag at the bottom but you can make it a separate ncloth with high rigidity and make it collide with the ribbon.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Ralph