Making cables problem

#1

Hello!

I’ve spent the last few hours trying to make cables for a robot I’m making. I’ve looked for posts on the subject here, as far back as 2007, but none really described how to do this.

Now, I’ve gotten this far on my own: I’ve plotted the path of the cables using curves. I tried using nCloth to simulate them, but I found it overly slow and annoying to deal with compared to nHair simulating rate. So I made the curves dynamic through nHair and worked out the dynamic properties to a point that looks good.

Since the cables are supposed to be pretty thick, kind of like rubber tubing, and thus pretty much retain their start shape except when there’s a sharp change in force vector (Like, when the foot hits the ground as the robot takes a step) I rely pretty heavily on the Start Curve Attract attribute.

Here’s where I hit a wrinkle, though. I can’t seem to find a way to rig them, to attach the ends of the cables to different parts of my rig. I know that I’ve done it before, when I was in school, using Maya Hair, but I can’t for the life of me remember how I did it.

So, has anyone got any idea of how to solve this?

#2

You can do it like this.

1.create your curve for the cable.

2.make curve dynamic

  1. go to the follicleshape1 node and set Point Lock to: No Attach

  2. select the the controlvertex of your curve where you want to attach it.

  3. create a transform constraint under the nconstraint menu.

  4. repeat step 4 and 5 for the other end of the curve

  5. parent the created locators under whatever object you want it to follow.

  6. tweak

  7. hit f13 (perfect render)

#3

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