Dynamic Rope

This tutorial will show you how to create a dynamic rope using softbodies in Maya.

  1. 1) First you need to create a NURBS cylinder with:
  2. rotate Z = 90
  3. scale X = .2
  4. scale Y = 9
  5. scale Z = .2
  6. spans = 10. click for image
  8. 2) Next select the cylinder and create a softbody (Soft/Rigid Bodies > Create Soft Body > Options box). Select "Duplicate, Make Copy Soft", Hide Non-Soft Object, Make Non-Soft a Goal, and Weight = 1. click for image
  10. 3) Next select the CVs of your Non-Soft Body cylinder and create two clusters, one for each half of the cylinder (Deform > Create Cluster >Options Box). Enable Relative Mode and set Envelope = 1. click for image
  12. 4) Now you want to create two locators and place each of them on each end of your cylinder. Then you will select your left locator and then the left cluster and point constrain the cluster to the locator (Constrain > Point Constrain). You will want to make sure that you enable "Maintain Offset" in the Point Constraint Options Box (Constrain > Point Constraint > Options Box). Do the same thing for the right cluster and locator. click for image
  14. 5) Next you will select your soft body particles and create springs (Soft/Rigid Bodies > Create Springs > Options Box). Select Creation Method: "Wireframe" and set Wire Walk Length = 2. You may want to lower the conserve value on your soft body particles to 0.99, as well. This will keep your rope under control and not have it flying all over the place when you animate your locators. click for image
  16. 6) Select your springs and set the stiffness = 30 and damping = .25. This will provide a soft feel to your rope. If this is too bouncy for your simulation you may wish to play with these two numbers. click for image
  18. 7) In component mode, select all of the soft body particles except the outter most rows. Then open the Component Editor (Window > General Editors > Component Editor...) and under the Particles tab change all of the goalPP values to zero. If you wish to have your soft body with a gradual falloff from the ends of the rope as it gets closer to the center, you can gradually step these numbers down. (ie .8, .6, .4, .2, 0) click for image
  20. 8) Now it's time to add a gravity field and play back your simulation. Select the particles of your soft body rope and apply a gravity field (Fields > Gravity). click for image
  22. 9) Now you can animate the positions of your locators and the rope will stay pinned to them at the end, but the middle portion will flow and react dynamically. click for movie