Character on a tight rope?

[Slash5]

Hi,

Can someone please put me out of my misery. I want my character to walk on a tight rope, but I'm puzzled as to how I animate the rope to bend under the characters weight. Morphing doesn't seem like the way to do it and I'm kinda new at IK, but something tells me that IK is how is this done. Am I right, if so, can you give me an idea of what to do? Or at least point me to a tutorial on this. I'd rather not have to buy a plugin, so if it can be done in lightwave that would be great.
I figured there's got to be an easy to accomplish this, cos animating each bone in the rope would just be silly.

I'm using Lightwave 7 if that matters.

Thanks for any help or ideas,

Slash5

[gjjackson]

Hi,

Can someone please put me out of my misery. I want my character to walk on a tight rope, but I'm puzzled as to how I animate the rope to bend under the characters weight. Morphing doesn't seem like the way to do it and I'm kinda new at IK, but something tells me that IK is how is this done. Am I right, if so, can you give me an idea of what to do? Or at least point me to a tutorial on this. I'd rather not have to buy a plugin, so if it can be done in lightwave that would be great.
I figured there's got to be an easy to accomplish this, cos animating each bone in the rope would just be silly.

I'm using Lightwave 7 if that matters.

Thanks for any help or ideas,

Slash5

I'm wondering if the Spline Animate feature wouldn't be helpful

[Silkrooster]

What about using reverse dynamics apply cloth to the rope and apply collision to your actor. By moving your actor down the rope should move with it. Just a theory.
Silk

[Slash5]

Thanks guys,

What's the Spline Animate Feature?

I've tried the cloth collision effect, but it doesn't seem to be the answer.

Basically, all I want to do is have two blocks that are joined by a rope and be able to pull down on the rope WITHOUT affecting the two blocks either side. Sort of like a stretchy rope.

I would've thought that this would be such a basic thing to do in such a complex program but obviously not. :(

[Silkrooster]

Heres another idea, what about creating the rope with a spline. Use hypervoxels to texture the spline. Now you should be able to just move the spline points in modeler to animate the rope. Like I said an idea, because I read that your suppose to beable to animate objects using modeler, I never done it. So it is more theory than an answer.
Silk

[SplineGod]

You could use use LWs built in spline deformer. I prefer to use a free one called Shift Spline Transform or FIs Bezier bend, both are free plugins.

You could also try a bone chain and IKBooster.

[toby]

There is a tutorial vtdeo for Splinamation somewhere on this site, but it's not available until 7.5c, which is a FREE UPGRADE! What are you waiting for?

This could be done with bones, remember that since the rope is 'tight', you would only have to animate the bones at the ends and at the feet. You'll have to figure out how to rig it, but keep in mind that it's impossible for a program to do everything automatically, especially when 'everything' is as unlimited as our imagination. Professional 3D artists have to figure out how to do things every single day.

[SplineGod]

Another possibility that comes to mind is to use a displacement map consisting of a gradient procedural or gradient texture. You would use two, one for each foot.
Each gradient would use a null as a reference object. You could move the nulls and have each gradient displace the rope with falloff but they could be moved.
Use weight maps to pin the ends of the rope.

[Slash5]

Hi Larry,

I'd love to try these plugins but after searching around on the net I can't seem to find any of them: Shift Spline Transform, FIs Bezier bend, IKBooster.

Do you know where I might be able to download them for 7.0 on a mac? I tried flay.com but could only find Shift Spline Transform for 7.5 and Bezier bend was a broken link.

Thanks for your ideas anyway

[SplineGod]

The link to shift spline transform works for me It is PC only. http://www.shift.gr.jp/html/staff/plugin.html

FIs Bezier Bend is here:
http://cgi.f23.aaacafe.ne.jp/~fisjunk/plugin/plugin.php

IKBooster is part of LW8

After playing around a bit the displacement map using a gradient thing was very easy to set up and use. :)

[toby]

I guess what he's waiting for is a 7.5c CRACK!

Don't come to Newtek's own website if you haven't paid for their software!

[toby]

No response!? HHMMMMMM.
:rolleyes:

[SplineGod]

Talk about walking a tightrope... ;)