Create cylinder with bones?

Question

I'm trying to build a segmented cylinder (r3xh6) in 3DS Max and attach bones to it so that it can essentially function like a rope fora game I'm working on.

The only way I can figure out how to do this is to create the cylinder and then create bones using the bone tools one bone at a time, then going through each bone and setting its rotation to identity then guesstimating an even distribution of positions of the bones and then setting up the bone weights (with more guesstimates) to figure out the blend weights.

Is there a better way to accomplish this? I dread what I'm seeing here..

Answer 1

It's now been quite a while since I was in 3DS - in modo I'd probably use a spline effector for this instead of bones, to get easier sliding and curved formation (I think in 3DS it'd be spline morph); or in 3DS you could model a prototype rope section and use Path Deform to control it, which would be far more fluid and simple than bones. That way you get high quality rope model and easy animatable deformation controls.

In modo, I'd be just as likely to not model out a segmented cylinder but simply use an actual spline, and set render curves to on for that mesh - I thought 3DS also supported modeling directly with splines in the same fashion: IIRC "enable in viewport - enable in renderer" checkboxes in the spline's parameters - I'm 90% sure it does - if the rope in question doesn't need to be hero quality I'd do this, but if it is a hero prop, then model a prototype of nice rope and use Path Deform.