Ultimate Rope Editor - New powerful rope physics for Unity3D [RELEASED]

Hi there! Did you follow the steps described in http://www.ultimategametools.com/products/rope_editor/help ?
Usually when your rope goes haywire it is because the rope length is smaller than the actual distance between the start and end nodes. Once you get that fixed it's a matter of parameter finetuning

 

Soon! I'm making videotutorials for all my assets since it's something that people have requested a lot.

 

@OneThree An update is now available at the Asset Store with your fix. Tell me if it worked.

 

I'm trying to create an USB cable, and I want it to behave as same as a datacable.
when I pull one end the other end also has to come as a cable...
But I can't create this, because when I pull it beyond it's length it didn't move actually, otherwise it's jittering madly.

 

I'm trying to setup a crane simulation where not only am i going to be using the ropes for loads but also to simulate reeving on the crane itself.

I've managed to get a setup where a single extensible rope runs from winch to anchor point through various sheaves but I've run into a couple of issues i'm having trouble solving.

On most of the sheaves i'm getting a twist in the rope which i can't seem to get rid of. I've already tried changing the spring, max force and angular parameters, also I've tried modifying number of links and colliders used and even tried upping the control points used around the problem areas but nothing as of yet has removed them.



additionally i found this rather difficult to setup due to the rope being quite unstable if the distances are incorrect. To resolve this i modified the scripts a little to add an option to auto generate lengths between segments when regenerating the rope, I intend to extend this further to give the rope a little more stability at run time also (also a requirement for myself as the crane boom has to move up and down whilst maintaining taut ropes.) I'm happy to share once finished.

Another issue I've encountered after setting this all up is now the coil no longer seems to work correctly.

In the editor I've setup a coil with an extensible length of 500 on minus Y right and X up with a bone count of 5000


but as soon as i enter play mode the coil seems to complete unwind and won't wind back in.



Any ideas on why this is happening would really help.

J

 

The coil problem seems to be related to my addition of automatic length calculation but the twisting issue remains a problem.

 

Will this work with Android or be to heavy?

 

Hi, how is the performance on mobile devices?

 

I'm looking for the same thing. :0 No reply so far .

 

Sometimes devs don't get notifications of new messages on their threads. If you're not getting an answer on the forum, contact @UGTools by PM or email.

 

Cool, thanks. Indeed it happens. But I think asset author should check their post more especially during madness sales

 

agreed.

 

He may not even know there is a madness sale, or that one of his plugins is in it.

 

Technically it could be, but in most case Store doesn't have such authority to make a sale without supplier's permission. You can check that list out, they're not just random assets. Obviously they're selected (I have purchased most of them).

So I would rather think UGTools is too busy to check his post. Anyway, there're a few days left, no hurry

 

Has anyone received a reply from the author? I've sent messages through their website and just sent a message to UGTools. I don't want to purchase anything that's been abandoned.

 

Hello JamesSen!

Sorry for the super late reply. I stopped receiving notifications and have many open threads on the forums. If it happens again please ping me to info@ultimategametools.com
Did you solve your issue?

 

Works great. And better since Unity 5 which has a very improved physics system performance-wise.
Most people use the asset on mobile and so far they seem quite happy

 

Yes, it happens from time to time and it bothers me a lot. I have more open forum threads and from time to time I lose notifications on some of them. If that happens please notify me by e-mail since I try to reply everybody as soon as I can.

 

Yes, fortunately there are still 5 days left but if it was my fault I would have taken care of it, don't worry

 

Not abandoned at all! I keep supporting this asset daily through e-mail and releasing new updates quite regularly

 

Hi,

Whats the correct way to setup a (procedural) Rope as a prefab for spawning at runtime? I see there is a "Enable Prefab Usage" which, when ticked, creates an Asset with the mesh in but it doesn't seem to handle changes to the rope. When I make a change to the rope it deletes the mesh in the asset file (leaving the asset file in some strange broken state that Unity doesn't like and requires a restart of Unity to delete it) and then makes a new mesh but doesn't put it into the asset file.

Is this a bug or am I going about it the wrong way?

Cheers

 

Great! Can you check to see if you got my question I sent through your website contact form? I don't want to have to retype everything.

Thanks

 

has anyone used this for fishing at all?? If so how well did it work?

 

Hi. I didnt find information. I would like to know how you create coil in demo scene? I mean unwinding the rope

 

Sorry it's been soo long I've been side tracked at work so it's been awhile since I've checked the forum.

I'm still getting the twisting issue it happens when the rope travels vertically between 2 points. My guess is it's related to Gimbal lock when generating the mesh but I haven't looked into the code itself.

This actually can cause really big issues if using non kinematic control points because the twist effects the physics and can badly effect the stability of the rope. I've managed to find a way around this for now by just using more fixed points which has actually allowed me to reeve up my cranes much more stably while only allowing the final end rope point to be non kinematic.

J

 

Hi UGTools,

I've been looking into extensions for ropes but stability is getting worse the longer the rope is extended. This can be easily viewed by increasing the extension length of the rope in you're coil sample scene up to 100.

As i'm working with cranes long extensions its pretty much a necessity do you think there's anything that can be done without effecting run time performance?

I came up with a potential idea to make the physics more stable by having it work on multiple smaller segments rather than 1 large segment by automatically inserting non-kinematic points into the rope at each given step in the extension (maybe every 50 units?) and then continue to extend the next section whilst maintaining the extension on the previous section.

I understand this has a potential drastic effect on performance adding the new segments and additional extensions but maybe this could be done at generation time by pre-creating the multiple extensions segments and extending them in sequence.

Similarly when using a rope with an extendable coil but the rope has multiple sections between the coil and the end point the inner segments don't give the illusion of actually moving this effect is only visible on the coil and the final section. Maybe the idea above could also give you a window into adding this extension effect into multiple sections.

J

 

I purchased this asset a couple of weeks ago and cannot figure out how to get the rope to act as a winch and pick up heavy objects. Im starting to think that it is not possible unless the object only weighs 1 mass unit.

I have tried all very high settings "3.402823e+38" (Link Joint spring, Damper and Link Joint Max Force....etc) and NOTHING will move my 2500 mass units vehicle. It just flips out. I have seen other users having this same issue. Is there a fix for large weighted objects and not just "1 mass unit" small objects?

Changing or faking the weight of the vehicle to make this work is NOT an option for my project. I need the user to be able to drive at the same time as the winch is cranking in.

I can crank the winch in and out beautifully and lay the rope on the ground. I can also have my avatar carry around the winch to the tree connection point...... but once connected, I cannot get it to move my 2500 "lbs" rigidbody vehicle one inch.

Am I confusing this Rope sim with a winch sim?..... Having seen the demo winches made with it I was under the assumption that it could be used to pick up objects.


Thank you.

Kevin

 

Hello Kevin,

Did you try changing the mass of the rope links? It seems like a big difference in weight. Probably setting higher mass values for the rope links on the inspector panel fixes the issue.

 

Yes, indeed. Unity's joint system isn't solid enough to handle extreme scenarios properly.
I think I didn't fully understand your potential solution. What exactly do you mean by inserting non-kinematic points? Each link is non-kinematic. Do you mean to "freeze" all links below a certain height?

 

Hello!
The coil is all done using the inspector panel of the rope editor. The only external asset is a script that calls to unwind the rope using two keys. What exactly are you having problems with?

 

How do you snap reset an extendable rope's length back to its starting value without any physics problems or gc allocations? Calling ExtendRope to -current rope length causes it to freak out the next time I use the rope even if I walk through the rigidbodies making sure they are stopped and inactive.

I need to disable a rope completely but have it start over at the starting value on the next usage. I see methods to create/destroy/reset ropes that produce a ton of GC allocs so I don't want to create or destroy any links but just disable back to start.

 

Hi there!

Try the following, and let's see if it works for you.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. void Start()
3. {
4.     RopePersistManager.StorePersistentData(rope);
5. }
6.  
7. void OnRespawn()
8. {
9.     RopePersistManager.RetrievePersistentData(rope);
10. }
11.  

 

If it wasn't clear because I was talking about gc allocations and physics interactions I am doing this at run time. Those functions are editor only and marked as such at least in my version (asset store latest). I also don't see how this helps me reset the length to zero without allocs considering Retrieve seems to just delete everything and recreate it.

 

Sure, let me try to create a similar scenario and check it out

 

Hi,
I am attempting to place a rope on an object that occasionally instantly changes location in the scene. Ideally, the rope would be in the exact same state afterwards, as though it were simulating in local space and not world space, so it didn't feel the parent's relocation.

Is this possible? Not seeing any API hooks that seem relevant.

thanks,
Travis

 

Man fixing this myself would be easier if almost all of the code wasn't stuck in one 4k+ line file. You could split this up along sensible lines (procedural rendering, physics, bone import, etc) and still expose it to the editor through a single editor script so there's no gain to a giant file unless you code in vim or something.

 

Hi UGTools,

I was thinking along the lines of dynamically inserting extra control points in a similar fashion to adding a segment manually in the editor as the rope extends to reduce the number of colliders and joints in each section of rope when doing long extensions.

Or maybe allowing multiple segments to have extensions rather than just the final segment

 

Hi @UGTools , I have a couple of questions about URE:
Can I create an extendable rope with links of variable length? For example 10 short links on the end of the rope, 10 more links of medium length and a number of long links.
Can I create an extendable rope with not minimal size on start? So player would be able both to extend and shorten the rope? How to do that?

 

Is there any tutorial available for this package. I actually need the step by step guidance for the Rope and Coil demo. I had imported this in the unity project. I tried to implement coil and rope. But the rope always goes crazy. I think step by step tutorial will help people like me, who is in the learning curve.

 

Since the update to unity 5.4 i'm not able to build any rope, all of them go crazy

 

Using the default rope rig so far, but not able to get it to stop going crazy - end is cconnected to a sub object of a ragdoll

https://gyazo.com/c2e5c6267f30e93a6e13ab419e9a8fe3

 

Unity joints are a mess and this asset does anything to change that. Considering how it is written I'd be surprised if this will ever work properly in anything except very simple cases like hanging light bulbs or just being draped over colliders.

I'd just give up on joints and this asset and fake rope interactions until Unity or another developer come up with a way to stabilize them.

 

hmm any update?

 

Hi everyone!
I'm trying to create a chain or web of winches, so the winch A could be attached to the winch B using it's rope and so on. I've tried to put your winch example inside the GameObject, then clone it and connect the rope end with hinge joint, but it's not working properly (rope going crazy in some cases, or just nothing in others)
Would be very glad if some body help me.

 

Try adjust/reduce the amount of rope colliders until it's stable.. after trying that if it's not stable then reduce iterations..
keep other objects with colliders away from the rope when it is first generated.. otherwise it will interfere with the rope trying to manifest. If you don't need colliders all the way through your rope then I'd recommend you only have you have something like 3 colliders.. start middle and end.

From your example I would think that the head leaning on the rope is causing it to destabilize. If the rope was allowed to manifest first without wiggle for a few seconds then it will be able to tolerate other rigid bodies/colliders.

 

Thanks - this solved another problem, but not this one. Would appreciate further advice or tricks on working with this asset.

Could this be a Unity 5.4 physics issue? I notice they stopped updating this asset package a while ago

 

What is the other problem?

About further development of this asset I think the developer may have passed away.. the guy broke his ankle.. and I've seen this before that they can create blood clots and with out a blood thinner right away they can cause a stroke. I've emailed the company, face booked, posted questions on the forum.. all activity of this developer has dropped off into oblivion it seems.

 

Sadly, it seems... the package is no usable after 5.4... the ropes go f*cking crazy, i think that it's some kind of problem with unity physics parts...

 

Some devs have a pattern of disappearing for a while and then they come back. If you look higher up on this page, people were wondering where he was back in August. His last visit to the Unity forums was on Dec 13, so he's been absent not quite a month, and mainly over the holidays.

I hope he's fine and in good health, and just on a nice long vacation or away working under contract for another company. But sometimes bad things do happen.

 

Also have major issues with this plugin in Unity 5.4+. Hoping the developer resurfaces and these issues can be fixed. Great tool but now completely unusable.