animating and making a knot tie over time??

[djlithium]

Hi there.
I need to do a project where I am going to be animating the tying of a knot (different ones). I can model a knot no problem, but animating a knot tying is another issue. I am hoping I can use some form of effector object that is the shape of the knot itself, dissolve it and then push a tube through this model end to end and have it conform as it moves along through the "pipe".

Does anyone have any suggetsions on how I might be able to go about doing this??

Please let me know.

[DigiLusionist]

You can use the same technique I used in the attached animation test. The same basic premise as the animation test I posted in the WIP forum (Growing Vines).

Refer to the Morph-To-Skelegons tutorial on www.md-arts.com.
Mark Dunakin wrote it, and it's easy to follow. I varied the effect a bit but stretching the original object in place, and not moving it one body length forward as he did for the slug.

[HowardM]

Oh man! That Growing Vine is great! And thats just using the "SlugArts' method?
:)

[djlithium]

Thanks guys...
This was kind of what I was thinking about.

I remember in a few other applications (odd ones like true space) that you could get an object to conform to the shape of another object as it was being pushing through it. This is what I was hoping for, but these two methods above are close enough that its work the extra steps. I might get into trouble on some of them though because of direction.


If anyone else has any ideas I am happy to entertain suggestions. I have to a several of these (30) so I am looking for something that is very mechanical in process so that I can replicate things easily for each knot regardless of shape.

[Mylenium]

There is a plugin called PG_A that will wrap an object along a spline. This will allow you to tweak the spline in Modeler without needing to convert it to a bone chain. It's in Japanes only, but easy to figure out. Look it up on http://www.flay.com .

Other tools in a similar fashion but different approach are the spline deformer in LW 7.5 b and FI's ZBend. Bassically there you bind a spline (which is created by the plugin) to your object and then animate the splines knots.

Mylenium

[DigiLusionist]

Good tips, Myl! I'm going to look for those myself...

[meshmaster]

is a useful free resource that can export .obj files... getting the knot untied will probably take a bit of keyframing, but shouldn't be too hard to do.