Maya tutorial: An Animated Chain Links

Maya tutorial Have you ever tried to prepare a shot for a film or a computer game of the animated sequence of gashed chain naturally falling down? If you are not sure whether you can do it effectively, or you are just interested in how we do it, this article is for you.

Todays tutorial will show you how to animate a chain of links using nail constraint and a gravity field.

 

 

 

 

Maya Tutorial: An Animated Chain Links

Step 1

Create a polygon primitive torus.

Step 1

Use inputs:
Radius 2;    Section Radius 0.5;    Twist 0;    Subd Axis 40;    Subd Height 15;
also change Scale Z to 0.7

Step 1 - Inputs

Step 2

Duplicate the torus.

Use the duplication five times so you will end up with six chain links.
Move the new links using translation and rotate them to make a chain.

Step 2

Step 3

Select the whole chain. Make sure you have selected all the links.
Than change the mode to dynamics, use the Fields menu and create a Gravity field.
Because you have selected the whole chain, all the links have been changed into rigid bodies and been affected by the gravity field.

Step 3

Step 4

Select the first torus of the chain.
Use menu Soft/Rigid Bodies and Create Nail Constraint.
This will anchor the first chain link.

Step 4

Step 5

Now the chain is complete, the gravity field is turned-on affecting the whole chain and the first link is anchored. It is time to see the result.
Set the playback range to 350 frames and hit the play button to see the animation.

Step 5

This was a very basic example of using the dynamics to animate the items in your scene.

 

{flv}chain_1{/flv}