I'm working on animations of characters performing different activities, and several of these include a Theraband. If you aren't familiar, it is a length of stretchy elastic. The basic shape is simply a flat strip, but I am having trouble making the physics right. I also need to attach it to the hands of a character to stretch and demonstrate the activity. Help please? I am very new to Blender and I know there is an answer for this challenge out there, and am looking forward to having it figured out. Thanks!!
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$\begingroup$ Bendy bones? Sounds like the right tool for the job, maybe $\endgroup$ – Linguini Sep 19 '18 at 23:23
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$\begingroup$ Possibly what you'r after - blender.stackexchange.com/questions/117061/… $\endgroup$ – Edgel3D Sep 20 '18 at 1:45
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Use a hooked cloth
Create a base mesh approximately the shape of a relaxed band with some subdivision (at least 4/5 vertices along its width, and around a hundred across):
... a couple subdivisions and a mirror later:
(hint: maybe I made it too relaxed. Make it tighter or it'll be very floppy during the simulation)
Select a bunch of vertices in the "hand" region, CtrlH > "Hook to New Object". This will create an Empty.
Repeat for the other hand
Select both the hooked regions, create a new Vertex Group and "Assign" these vertices to it
Create the other objects that will interact with your band (like: a foot, a floor) and select "Collision" from the Physics tab for each of them.
Animate the Empties (from step 2) according to the hand's motion
Select the rubber band, apply "Cloth" from the Physics menu. Use the Rubber preset but increase both the Structural and the Steps values. Enable "Pinning" and select the Vertex Group created at step 3. Increase also the Collision Quality. You can increase the Structural (how "hard" the band is) further, but every time you do so you should also increase Steps and Collision Quality.
Bake the Cloth Cache or just play the animation (AltA)
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$\begingroup$ This is brilliant, thanks so much! How would you suggest going about the character holding the material in their hands? To make it look as if they are holding onto it? $\endgroup$ – Julian Quebedeaux Sep 27 '18 at 22:39
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$\begingroup$ ehe sorry but characters are not my forte! there are YouTube channels that can give you inspiration and guidance I hope. if you struggle with something in particular, you can of course ask a new question here (if it hasn't been asked already) and somebody will help you :) $\endgroup$ – Nicola Sap Sep 27 '18 at 22:49
