Seeing a recent post about chains reminded me of a question I've had in the back of my head. Has anyone ever made a chain / ropes prop that works as P5 /P6 dynamic cloth? In other words, you could constrain both ends of a rope and let the dynamic cloth room create you that perfect cantilever curve. Slightly off subject, I tried using easypose chains in P5, and it really didn't work very well. Cheers

Interesting. I know there's a rope set at rotica that does have a more natural movement but I don't believe it's a dynamic thing, I believe it uses some parenting tricks. Couldn't tell you for certain, don't have it... saw the banner ad for it though.

Yes, I have used a rope for a horse halter. When the horse moves around the rope moves natural.
Rope is constrained to the halter and bent over a torus while clothifying.

Also reins on a bridle. constrained to the bridle and hanging over the lower neck of horse. Moves natural when horse moves.

Both works great!
I created the rope and reins in Wings3D.

Can't show animations right now because I'm on my way to the air port.

Both rope and chains present problems for clothifying.

The problems I have come across are as follows:

Rope are essentialy cylinders. Since the cloth room expects to be working with fabric (thin stuff) the rope tends to collapse much like an empty fire-hose. (Now there's a thought - empty fire-hoses could could be clothified easily, just constrain the ends to the nozzle and the hydrant... but I digress...) Beware cloth/cloth collisions (can cause cloth room to hang/go haywire if they get too complex).

Chains are another matter.
They have the same problem as ropes, but applied to each link in the chain. I haven't tried this, but it "should" be possible to get around this by creating a thin strap that runs the length of the chain, creating a new object which includes both strap an chain, grouping all the links and making them "rigid decorated", and texturing the strap to be totally transparent. Oh, and making the strap totally non-elastic.

Sorry about the verbose response - I was thinking as I typed (well I call it thinking anyway). I may have a go at the "chains" thing myself when I get a bit of time to spare..:-)

Hope this helps..

Cheers,
Diolma
(Edited 'cos of obvious typos and other blunders. I probably missed some other blunders..)

Message edited on: 06/21/2005 17:10

The thought I had on this is that you would make a simple strip (that would clothify well) and in the final render would be invisible. The rope or chain would be done with the "soft detail" selection, and bend with the strip.

Thanks for all the wonderful response. What exactly is a "soft detail"?

Um...whatever you call it in the cloth room. "Soft decoration," maybe? It's the verts you select that do not take place in the simulation, but conform to the underlying cloth instead.

"Slightly off subject, I tried using easypose chains in P5, and it really didn't work very well." What was the problem?

Hello Ajax: It's not intended as a slight on your many products. I tried the freebie "EP Tube" and one of your commercial products I believe. The "node" dials affecting the entire character never made an appearance. I could only adjust a single segment at a time. I use Poser5. I didn't fully investigate the problem, just chalked it up to "works for some, but not for me." I was hoping to create a perfect cantilevered curve between two unique X,Y,Z points, like a chain hanging between two uneven surfaces. Sounds easy, but I could never get the knack. Cheers

Catenary curve is a pain. I don't think any easy-pose item has been written with that function (I could be wrong here). I've looked at the common mathematical abstractions -- including one by Thomas Jefferson -- but they are mighty complicated. So using cloth, which does have weight, could be the easiest way to simulate the effect.

Hi kenyarb, Here's a screenshot from Poser 5. As you can see, the dials show up under the "Other" dial group, so if you haven't scrolled to the bottom of the dial stack or expanded the Other dial group, you won't see them. In most of my stuff, there are EasyPose dials in all of the body parts, but the node dials are located in one particular body part (link01 in this screenshot), so if you can't see them you may not have the right body part selected. The pose shown above is done with just one dial adjustment. You can see it in the screenshot (CatenaryS4). Catenary dials are intended precisely for creating a mathematically accurate hang between two points. You can see in the pic that both points are on the same level. For points at different levels, just hide the links at one end until you get to the level you want. The chains aren't the only EasyPose items with catenary dials. I have a skipping rope in the free stuff section that also has catenary dials and EasyPose Underground can be used to add them to the figure of your choice. Hope that helps :-)

Sniff. I do wish I could figure out how to run EasyPose Underground on a Mac. Is a pain writing that stuff by hand. Nice curve. I remember hearing someone had attempted it...is great to see someone actually coded it!

Sorry for the double post -- rendo burped.

Message edited on: 06/24/2005 13:34

I wish I could figure out how to port it to Mac. What about those PC emulator things? Do they work?

They work for some things. I've got a lead on a (free) used PC as well, just for little tools like that. Would have to get it onto the LAN, tho, for it to be much use...

@Ajax
Have you ever thought of using Java (or geting someone to convert it to Java for you) ?

You'd get something that would run on PCs and Macs (and Linux) without all the hassle of trying to port VB or VC.

No I haven't thought about Java...Lot of bad experiences with it (crashity crash crash crash). Might be worth looking into though.

Guess it depends on how long ago you tried it.
There are some good tools (no more hand coded GUIs) and a lot of useful open source libraries available.
Interesting examples are Art of Illusion, Arbaro and Netbeans

Got to be easier than the MPE and C++ (I looked at it, and decided "not this lifetime")