Bend Physics Motor
This is a physics based motor that is applied to a chain of bones. It allows you to automatically generate dynamics/secondary motion for a chain of affected bones. By animating the first/parent bone of the chain, the child bones of this motor will proceed to animate themselves based off physics simulation in a natural way. This motor is very useful for animating any sort of dangling item ( like a tail for instance ) or even flappy cloth type structures with bones driving the deformation of the mesh.
General Tips for Bend Physics: - If you drive this motor with another one like a Rotate Cycle, you can create some easy and compelling swaying motion without setting more than 2 sets of keyframes - Playing around with the stiffness properties allows you to simulate different kinds of material - For higher level of stiffness, remember to also increase the amount of damping so that the simulation is stable - If you do not want the shape of the chain to be altered at the first frame, set gravity values to 0 ( remove gravity )
Animatable Properties
- BendStiffness : How stiff the material is in terms of bending. Higher levels will preserve the initial shape of the bone chain
- StretchStiffness : How stiff the material is in terms of stretching. Higher levels will make the bone chains not stretch easily
- Damping : How quickly the material loses energy over time. If the simulation is unstable, increase this value
- OverDampFactor : Another property to tweak how quickly energy is dissipated. This value is factored in on top of the Damping property
- GravityX : Gravity force in X
- GravityY : Gravity force in Y
- GravityZ : Gravity force in Z
Static Properties
- SimSteps : The number of substeps of the simulation, the higher the more stable at the cost of less dynamics
- Mass : How heavy each bone in the chain is