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My end goal is to be able to move one object, and have others that are connected to it, follow as if they're being pulled/dragged by a string or spring. Ideally I'd also want to be able to lock the rotation of the following objects. I'd also want to be able to pick any object in the link and move that

See the gif for what I'm trying to do. I animated each of these objects manually, but I want to be able to just animate/move one of the objects, and have the others follow automatically without having to animate each one. Imagine the object highlighted is the one I'm "moving." enter image description here enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ You want rigid body physics. Each object should be an independent rigid body; the three you want to animate should have "animated" trait; and you'll want to join each pair with spring-type rigid body constraints. "Locking rotation" is a bit ambiguous, it's doable but you'd need to specify what you mean (lock to what, parent rotation? world rotation?) If you're not yet familiar with rigid body physics, you should start by following along with some Blender rigid body tutorials. $\endgroup$
    – Nathan
    Commented Jul 5 at 21:26
  • $\begingroup$ @Nathan by "lock rotation," I basically just want it to look like the above GIFs where they arent rotating at all. im not super familiar with rigid body physics but thank you, I'll look into it! Do you have any specific playlists/guides to recommend for learning? $\endgroup$
    – Zamo Omaz
    Commented Jul 5 at 21:34
  • $\begingroup$ For something simple like this maybe geometry nodes or even drivers would be better? $\endgroup$
    – Markus von Broady
    Commented Jul 6 at 7:13
  • $\begingroup$ is that github.com/luckychris/blender_gifs/blob/main/spring%20aniim.gif what you want? $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Jul 6 at 9:31
  • $\begingroup$ @MarkusvonBroady How would I achieve this with geometry nodes or drivers? I'm open to alternate methods! $\endgroup$
    – Zamo Omaz
    Commented Jul 6 at 11:50

1 Answer 1

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  1. First create one object and add rigid body to it.
  2. Double that object with shift-D and move it to another place.
  3. Repeat step 2 four times so that you have 6 objects in the right start positions
  4. check "animated" for these two objects because they won't be calculated by Blender's simulation system, but will be animated:

enter image description here

4b) keyframe the location of these two objects as you wish for different frames

  1. now select two rigid bodies and choose object > rigid body > connect

enter image description here enter image description here

choose "generic spring":

enter image description here

  1. now a constraint/empty appears between these 2 objects:

enter image description here

limit the angles to 0 like this:

enter image description here

give the linear z-axis values like this:

enter image description here

restrict transforms like this:

enter image description here

now you have created a spring connection between two objects which only "works" in z-direction (linear).

Repeat this process to the other cubes. Of course the linear stiffness/damping values must be adapted.

Here is my blend file to check it out:

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