Advice to get a specific result

[Hakazaba]

I've been toying around with rope and rod for a little while, working on tentacles.

I want them to be able to return to a specific state, while relaxing, and squrming somewhat occasionally.

I've managed to get near perfect effects by using rods. With a low bend compliance, the tentacles, if disturb, squrm around creepily and its wonderful! However, no matter how bend compliant i make them, i cant seem to be able to bend from its own inertia when the tentacle as a whole bobs up and down, while dangling. They just stretch and compress along their length, even when already curled, unless the movement is extreme enough to make the whole rod invert on compression.

Its really strange because if you actually rotate the object that the tentacles are attached to, they still dangle down toward the ground as intended. How do i make my rods bend instead of squash and stretch when theyre bouncing?



Alternatively. Ropes behave perfectly in this regard, but they dont easily return to their initial blueprint position. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to do it with this that will also get this weird squrming effect which i like?

[josemendez]

Its really strange because if you actually rotate the object that the tentacles are attached to, they still dangle down toward the ground as intended. How do i make my rods bend instead of squash and stretch when theyre bouncing?

You can control this with rotational mass. This scales the inertia tensor of each particle, which determines how "rotatable" (i think I just invented a new word) the rod particles are. You can set the rotational mass per control point, in the path editor.

If you reduce the rotational mass, particles will be more prone to rotate/bend. If you increase it, they will become more hard to bend (and they will squash/stretch instead, like you describe).

Alternatively. Ropes behave perfectly in this regard, but they dont easily return to their initial blueprint position. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to do it with this that will also get this weird squrming effect which i like?

Ropes can't return to their initial blueprint position, that's the main difference with rods.

[Hakazaba]

YES! Thank you so much, its perfect!