Creating a branching rope blueprint

[JollyTheory]

Hi, I have a vine generated by RealIvy asset on the assetstore, and I want to turn that branching vine into a simulated branching rope. I have a list of points and connections between them as data. I assume I'm going to have to create a blueprint through code and use stitch constraints. One of my questions is: can I have this entire branching rope be represented by a single blueprint or do I need to create a separate ObiActor for every individual branch of the vine?

You can imagine the vine as something like this:
-----------------
    / \
  /   /\  
/   /    \

I want this all to be a single simulated rope thing.

[josemendez]

Hi, I have a vine generated by RealIvy asset on the assetstore, and I want to turn that branching vine into a simulated branching rope. I have a list of points and connections between them as data. I assume I'm going to have to create a blueprint through code and use stitch constraints. One of my questions is: can I have this entire branching rope be represented by a single blueprint or do I need to create a separate ObiActor for every individual branch of the vine?

You can imagine the vine as something like this:
-----------------
    / \
  /   /\  
/   /    \

I want this all to be a single simulated rope thing.

Hi!

Using ropes for this makes no sense whatsoever, you'll run into a dead end for multiple reasons:

- Ropes do not model torsion, which means they can freely rotate around their longitudinal axis. Vines won't look good at all if allowed to twist and turn this way.
- Ropes can't be drawn as arbitrary meshes, at most they can deform a mesh along one of its object-space axis (see ObiRopeMeshRenderer)
- Stitch constraints only constrain particle positions, but they leave orientations free. This means each connection in your vine will behave as a hinge joint and allow all vine branches to freely rotate around the point where they meet with their "parent" branch.

Imho your best bet for this is to generate a sort of skeleton (transform hierarchy) for your vine mesh and then apply a ObiBone component to it.

kind regards,