Hello, I apologize if this belongs in the modeling topic.

I’m trying to animate a moving rope based on simulation data.  I know how to import my motion data for individual objects.

I’ve seen lots of tutorials where one uses simulations or soft bodies with IK in order to create a rope.

However, I’m short on time for learning how to use all these features and I want the rope to follow my coordiates exactly. 

I was hoping I could do something like the following:
1. create points in Maya which correspond to my data points
2. connect the points with a curve
3. loft a circle using the curve as a path in order to make a rope
4. move the points.  due to History, the rope position is updated

Is there a way to do something like this in Maya?  I’ve tried, and it looks like ep points do not have key-able channel data, so I can’t create animations for them separately. 

I’m using .mov data file imports to generate x, y, and z motion keys for the points.

Thanks for any feedback!
-Ben

you can use spheres instead of points.  Loft between the isoparms of the spheres like you were going to do for the points.  Turn off the primary visibility of the spheres so you can manipulate them, but they won’t render.  You can also put them on a layer and make them invisible, but the primary visibility will keep them accessible to you.

Ben -
My spheres idea works well for dynamic simulations, but I can see where it won’t work in your situation.  If you have a curve that is made of CV points, you can create a cluster out of each CV.  Clusters are actual DAG nodes, so you can keyframe them or constrain them as you need.  I’d point constrain them to locators or just control objects like circles so you can control the rope easily.

Instead of lofting your rope, I’d use an extrude so that the profile curve stays perpendicular to the path curve. 

Good luck

Hey, thanks for the input.  I found some alternate solutions that I’ll document here. 

The first thing I did was I created locators, which I keyframed, and then I created a curve out of edit points and used connection editor to link the x,y,z translation values of the locators to the x,y,z translations of each edit point (I had to select the curve in component mode in order to get the controlpoint properties to show up in the connection editor).  What threw me off was the lack of edit point transform entries in the channel box and graph editor, otherwise this would have been an open and shut case.  I had to use connection editor and had to load the properties of curveShape (not just “curve") by selecting the edit points of the curve instead of the curve object as a whole.  This exposes “controlPoint[x]” properties, which have x, y, and z transforms and appear to be the same thing as editPoints.

Now I just started poking around, and if I select a curve’s control vertices, the channel data for the CV’s DO show up in the channel box and the graph editor.  Now, if my curve is linear (degree 1 in the creation box), then it looks like CV’s and EP’s are the same for practical purposes and I can keyframe and control points on the curve using more straightforward methods. 

However, if I wanted to smooth my curve between points (use a degree 3 curve, for instance) AND I wanted absolute control of the location of the points that I am keyframing, CV’s won’t work, because when a curve is non-linear, the CV does not determine the exact position of a point on the curve. 

The clusters idea seems cool, I will check it out as well.

Thanks,
Ben