Attaching a "rope" to another mesh for animation

#1

Hey there!

I’m a beginner animator and I just modeled a trebuchet which I want to animate. I ran into a problem which I’m not really sure if it should go into rigging, modeling or animation but here goes.

http://i.imgur.com/iNXzL.png

There are 3 parts to it; the arm + counterweight, the body, and the rope along with the end there which you can turn to lower the arm.

The 2 red circles mark what I want to essentially “glue” into place. So when I rotate the arm the rope will follow along. How would I do this? I wouldn’t mind changing it around since the 2 ropes are just cylinders.

I use 3ds max

Help is much appreciated!

#2

I was gonna make a new thread, but you already asked the same question.
My situation is;

I would like the cord to be wrapped around the pulley, like a real one would do.

My idea was to animate the cord using, splines, or bones. But I am not sure how they would fit.

Since there are no other answers, what did you think about to solve this problem?

#3

You need to simulate in the animation or just make those edges stick to the pole?

You can select those vertex and apply a linkedXform to make it stick to the pole surface.

If your idea is to simulate you would have to use cloth and make a group for those vertexes and attach them to the pole surface (depending on the max version you are using you could use rope from Reactor).

Regards and good luck with your project.
Hope this could be of help.

#4

As I found out, splines and path deform modifier, gets the job half done.
Howewer there is another problem.

So, the cord wraps around the pulley, but its start point is not fixed, and it would look like it’s sliding around the pulley even if the pulley rotated.

Oh wait, your question is different. Its a bit late, but why dont you skin the vertices to some bones to keep them at place?

#5

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