i just gave up trying to do this for an animation, i read a tutorial to do it but it needed simcloth 3 plugin that only works up to max 6 i think
first picture- the wire/cable
the other 2 is what it needs to do

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Try this… animated spline with Render option.

Bruce Hammond
e-nimation.com
Peterborough, NH USA

Max8-32 SP3, Max9-32 SP2, WinXP

Look up “reactor rope” in the Help. Alternatively, you could use a Renderable Spline and animate it yourself. Or a cylinder and a Path Deform.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

actually, that one there is an spline animated with skin warp to keep the ends attached

the problem was the animation, because one of the ends has this trajectory

i got close with cloth modifier, but it deformed too much due to inertia

PS:ill take a look at the reactor rope again (i tried it once)

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Did you try simply animating the spline with Enable in Renderer and Enable in Viewport checked?

Bruce Hammond
e-nimation.com
Peterborough, NH USA

Max8-32 SP3, Max9-32 SP2, WinXP

that was i said :), its a spline like you say, but with skin warp to make the 2 ends attach where they are supposed to be plugged, and the rest of the spline its manually animated

PS:sorry my english, its not my mother language

Here is one from Garry Clarke using splineIK.

Link: Ropes in 3ds Max R.6

E. K. Anna Hennequet [FA]

Anna,
My sample is Max 6 as well. Directions in the File > Summary Info.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

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505_LED2wLN27ksaR2bBBdUA.zip

You could use spline select and linked xform to have the spline “connected” to other scene objects.

The “gotchas” for this technique are…

the spline node should not be linked in a hierarchy (it will inherit it’s movement from other objects)

do the setup in base/bind/figure-mode pose

make sure all spline knots are assigned to a linked xform (unless you want them to not move)

The procedure is…

add spline select
select knot on spline (leaving the subobject mode in vert mode)
add linked xform
select control object
[repeat until out of knots]

Try it on a simple spline with a couple of dummies. this technique can connect splines to
just about anything.

This sounds intriguing; do you think this could be a scripted approach?

For example:

get number of knots
attach control objects to each knot
add linked transform to each knot

just a thought!

ScriptChimp 02 November 2007 05:54 PM

You could use spline select and linked xform to have the spline “connected” to other scene objects.

The “gotchas” for this technique are…

the spline node should not be linked in a hierarchy (it will inherit it’s movement from other objects)

do the setup in base/bind/figure-mode pose

make sure all spline knots are assigned to a linked xform (unless you want them to not move)

The procedure is…

add spline select
select knot on spline (leaving the subobject mode in vert mode)
add linked xform
select control object
[repeat until out of knots]

Try it on a simple spline with a couple of dummies. this technique can connect splines to
just about anything.

try to use a hose its good too, u goo on extented primitive rollout, create two point helper the, the to prepare the hose u right click on the hose segment, by default u l have 3, you can add any segment u want , after u play with diameter parameter by right clicking on it, this will make zeor defalt on it, after that you click on bound to objet pivots and u chose your top and bottom objets (poitn helpers), the increase or decrase the tension of each one to have the right ammont of it for both helpers and that’s it,, I hope its going to help you have nice 3d time