extending a cable

[Master chief]

ok iv come accross a bit of a problem, in one scene im working on a tiny "Hackerbot" jumps onto a large for lack of a better word tank , its then supposed to extend a cable to conect to the tanks cpu to take it over , how ever iv come accross a problem where extending the cable will cause it warp/no longer be round as it has to bend and twist through the tanks armor , im currently using a set of 8 circles attached by 4 lines to make the tube. is there a better way to make this work?

 

Note: the effect im looking to try and create is similar to the sentinals legs from the matrix

[robcat2075]

show a pic of what you have. It's too hard to judge what's wrong from a text description.

[John Bigboote]

Not all of us automatically know what 'the sentinel from the matrix' looks like... I had to Google it, it ALWAYS helps to show a picture. A picture is worth 650 words. (It used to be worth 1000 words, but then the recession hit.)

 

LOOKS like you are trying to rig tentacles... there is an infamous tutorial out there called 'Old Bendy Legs' (I'll search for it's link...)

[Master chief]

where you able to find it john , i tryed to search for it but came up with nothing

[robcat2075]

where you able to find it john , i tryed to search for it but came up with nothing

 

I just did a Google search on "old bendy legs" and it was the very first thing to come up.

 

 

 

Don't miss William Gaylord's continuing thread on different ways he is rigging tentacles

[Master chief]

while that tut was informative its still not what i need , in essence i have a cable that starts very small ie put away , the hacker bot jumps onto the tank punched through its armor and extends the cable to the tanks cpu taking it over , the problem i was having was that after extending the cable a certain distance the cables width begain to faulter and is would change shape after a large extention. i will attempt to post a picture of what im talking about soon as im currently not at my main animation computer

[robcat2075]

while that tut was informative its still not what i need , in essence i have a cable that starts very small ie put away , the hacker bot jumps onto the tank punched through its armor and extends the cable to the tanks cpu taking it over , the problem i was having was that after extending the cable a certain distance the cables width begain to faulter and is would change shape after a large extention. i will attempt to post a picture of what im talking about soon as im currently not at my main animation computer

William Gaylord covers an extending tentacle, which is pretty much the same thing.

[Master chief]

ok i said that i would upload a file of what im trying to do , this one is however of the leg of a walker , essentualy a 4 legged pod ,

this is one of the legs

 

 

and here is the file itself

legm.mdl

[heyvern]

To bend a cylinder without distorting the shape you have to rotate the cross sections. It's just like a "pipe" or "tube" that is bent. The cross section at the bend rotates to keep the shape. If you just stretch and translate the points of the cross sections without rotating them it isn't going to look right. That is why most of us use bones for each cross section constrained to other bones in varying amounts in a chain so that the cross sections rotate properly to maintain the shape. This may be harder to set up but it's way easier to animate.

 

A cylindrical "shape" like the cable you describe stretching and punching into something may need more patches to maintain the shape after it is stretched. If you stretch a cylindrical shape too far, spreading out the cross sections too much even rotating those sections might not keep the shape consistent.

 

-vern