realistic chain shaping

[Garett_Haight]

I'm trying to get this chain to droop realistically from one metal plate to the other one. I tried to do it by hand first, but I keep screwing something up and having to go back and do it all again.

if anyone knows anyway in which I can do this in Max 6 using reactor or whatever it'd be a great help.

[traBBit]

This is a bit offtopic, but is that somekind of silent hill like scene?

[Iron Boot]

You should rig it by making a bone for each link, then link each bone to each link. then you can move the bones to move the chain, it will be much easier to control.

[Stylus]

Just draw the curve with a spline, attach two bits of the chain together and use the path tool. Or you could fiddle with the spacing and not attach two pieces together, hope you understand what I meant by that... :-O
Good luck.


stylus...

[Garett_Haight]

traBBit wins! It's inspired by silent hill 4.

Iron Boot: I tried using bones, but I guess I suck at using bones or something cause I couldn't get it to work right.

Stylus: I don't know what the path tool is @_@

[Freespace-3DT]

Reactor is the only way to do this efficiently.
Create a Rigid Body Collection.
Then, for each chain in part, add the Rigid Body modifier. Then, select your collection and add all the rigids in the collection. For the outermost chain on each side, open the Property Editor from reactor's toolbar, and set Unyielding. This way, in the simulation, the Unyielding chains will not be affected by anything, but will move as you've moved them in the viewport. Get it?... just try this. it will work.
Tip: If it doesn't work, select all the chains, enter the Property Editor and select Concave Mesh. This way reactor will be slower, but much much more accurate. Also, try to reduce the global collsion tolerance to as low as you can so you don't have objects sticking through each other.
HOPE THIS HELPS.

[Stubby-]

I think i will give it a go tomorrow. It might become usefull....

[3dmonkey]

create a spline line of how you want the chain to look. then use the path deform animation modifier on the chain object.
that's what i did here on a spring object to make the phone cord.
http://forums.3dtotal.com/attachment...chmentid=69185

[Garett_Haight]

Thanks for the help everyone

Freespace's method worked the best to get what I need. For some reason when I used the path deform tool it distorted the mesh a lot.

thanks again everyone!

[Freespace-3DT]

Reactor rulez
Garett, show us what you did... update.

[Garett_Haight]

I'll have to tweak with it some more. When I use the concave mesh option it freezes my PC during the calculation. I'm also working full time so it may be a little while before I can do it.

[Freespace-3DT]

considering the shape of a chain, i think you should make them concave meshes, but if it freezes your PC, see how it simulates the whole scene if you make them convex... it might not be as accurate and you could even have some weird errors, but who knows? what is your PC configuration?

[Garett_Haight]

it seems that when I used several chain links it freezes. It has no problem with shorter lengths of chain.

If I use the convex mesh option the links just fall through each other O_o

I'm using a laptop with the following specs:
3.06 GHZ P4HT
1024 MB DDR ram
Radeon mobility 9000 128 MB

Also using max 6.
Maybe I can get a patch for 6 and it'll fix the problem, but unlikely.

[Bugatow]

Thx Freeaspace, will have to givet hat a shot

[Freespace-3DT]

Well? did it work for you guys? worked for me...