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I am trying to rig a rope so that it spans between two objects. Technically it is a fuel line, regardless I am trying to get it to work with the soft-body physics, primarily because A, it will be affected by gravity, and B, the engine rotates in relation to the body of the vehicle.

enter image description here

As you can see, I have two bones that I want this fuel line (red line) to span between. I have been trying to use a bezier curve with soft-body enabled, but it only connects to one bone and flops around on the floor like a fish at the other end.(Why does it flop around if no forces are acting on it?)

Thank you for any assistance.

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  • $\begingroup$ There are forces: the internal forces of the molecules/whatever inside the soft body. But more likely, what you're seeing is the bounceback (energy is conserved) from the initial falling of the soft body, about the point where the gravitational force balances with the internal elastic forces. $\endgroup$ – wchargin Aug 20 '13 at 22:59
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One way to do this is to use Constraints and a mesh:

  1. Instead of a curve, use a mesh object made up of two vertices:

    enter image description here

  2. Subdivide it with loopcuts (CtrlL) or W> Subdivide.

  3. Hook each end vertex to the corresponding object (or bone) with CtrlH:

    enter image description here

  4. Assign a Vertex Group to the end vertices.

  5. Make the line object a Soft Body object and set the vertex group to the end vertices group:

    enter image description here

  6. Add a Skin modifier to the line object, and use Vertex scale (CtrlA in edit mode) to scale the size of the hose.

  7. Add a Subsurf or Bevel modifier afterwards to round the hose out.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cool. Is there any way to prevent it from stretching? $\endgroup$ – Evan Aug 21 '13 at 3:28
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    $\begingroup$ I prefer to use a curve and hook each control point to a sphere, then make the spheres rigid bodies with chained constraints. No stretching, super quick calculations $\endgroup$ – Greg Zaal Aug 21 '13 at 6:23
  • $\begingroup$ @GregZaal, when you say control point, do you mean vertex? $\endgroup$ – Jesse Mar 16 '16 at 22:53
  • $\begingroup$ I suppose you could call it that, though control point makes more sense to me for curves. $\endgroup$ – Greg Zaal Mar 17 '16 at 8:14

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