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I'm still somewhat of a blender noobie but have learned a bunch over the past six months of learning blender. I want to create an animation where a rope wraps around a pole like in the game Tetherball and then it unwraps and rewraps on the opposite side. I've explored using rigid body simulations and rigging bones but everything I've tried up to now hasn't worked. All I really need is just to be pointed in the right direction and I can research it and figure it out on my own. At this point, I just don't know what blender process will lead me to the results I'm looking for. Thanks in advance for your help.

Al

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You can use Soft Body physics to achieve this - similar to How to get the physics engine to wraps a string around the moving part of a motor constraint?

Here's a quick example :

swingball

The key here was to setup the 'string' as a string of vertices with Soft Body, setup the 'pole' with collision, and use a Wind force at the start of the animation (keyframed to just give an initial 'push' and then stop - with 'flow' set to zero) to give it the initial motion. The Soft Body simulation does the rest.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hello Rich, this is just what I was looking for. I really appreciate the quick response! One last question though. What if I wanted to animate an object being attached to it like a ball, would that effect the Soft Body setup? And, what if I wanted the ball that's attached to come to a rest on the first wrap for about 10 secs before it unwraps. Can this be done with the Soft Body system? $\endgroup$
    – user109536
    Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 12:20
  • $\begingroup$ Hi @user109536 - glad to help. The Soft Body can't really interact properly with the Rigid Body so it's not easy to attach a ball to the end. For that you probably want to start with a rigid body simulation by using lots of separate RB objects chained together using RB constraints. This will behave very similar to the SB 'rope' but would allow you to attach a RB ball onto the end. Pausing it would be possible by 'slowing down' the RB world settings to give the appearance of stopping - or there are ways by converting to keyframes. Probably enough for a separate question! :-) $\endgroup$
    – Rich Sedman
    Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 12:48
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks again for the quick response! I think I got it. In my prior research, I studied a video that used several rigid body objects chained together, so I have a good idea of how this could work. I'll give it a shot and see what I can come up with. I really appreciate the help! $\endgroup$
    – user109536
    Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 13:25

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