How to set up a rope-animation with local gravity - part 2
Select each cv of the curve end create a cluster.
Select each cluster and the corresponding cube and parent the cluster to each cube. Now the curve is dynamically animated through the cubes.
Create a sphere and attach it through a motionpath to the curve. In graph-editor edit the timing so that the graph runs from value=0 at frame 1 to value=1 at frame 100. Create two additional keys with value=1 at 150 and value=0 at 250. Flatten the tangents. Now the sphere should move between frame 1 to 100 from left to right and between frame 150 to 250 from right to left. Of course, this is only a test-animation to check the additional gravity later.
Again, select the 5 inner cubes and add a second gravity-field, but this time with settings like magnitude=200 to 500 and attenuation=2. Move the gravity to the center of the sphere and parent it to the sphere. Make a quick test and hit play. The gravity-field should move with the sphere and locally influence the cubes and the curve. To alter the "pulling" you can play around with the magnitude setting and the stiffness-settings of the spring-constraints.
Whatīs left to do: create a small circle and extrude it along the curve.
Create a new layer and hide all the cubes in that layer. Later, if using shadows, donīt forget to turn off "casting shadow" in the render stats of the cubes.
Now again, hit play and enjoy ... :)
If you want to skip all steps, you can download a test-scene here.
go back to part 1