How to create a rope in Maya that collides with a torus and winds up on

[martin-bauer]

Hallo! I am just building a trebuchet (kind of catapult) and don't find a solution for a rope that really works.
My Problems with the rope are:
1. The rope has to wind up at a cylindrical axis.
2. The rope goes through a hole of a fixed torus
3. The rope has to collide with the main "arm" of the trebuchet.
4. The rope has to pull something

I know the problems are pretty hard to explain, for that reason here is a picture.

I hope for help - please.

[joojaa]

not trivial at all.

rope that really works.

why? Maya is not s mechanical simulation software. but aanimation package. Its about 2000 times easier to animate it working than to acrually simulate it.

so making it look like it works no problem ->1 hour rigging , making it work like the real deal -> 1 month of work.

[martin-bauer]

What parts would you rig?

It's good to hear that it is not trivial, because I am trying pretty hard every tutorial and every solution I can think of since a couple of days...

[joojaa]

2 days dont constitute hard, merely light recon of the problem. rigging something for months is not really unheard of. That then means after 2 days you have nothing to show.

[b]What parts would you rig?

[/b]All, the ropes could be done by maya hair IF you do not rely on them to transport tension. The winding can be easily done by joining and animating a helix (helix is easy to do justa  curve on surface on a cylinder that can then be animeted for layering) with a dynamic curve.

Now hopefully all that remains is to move the boom and driving with it the length of one piece of hair curve.

[martin-bauer]

Thank you.