Animating cables

J0NNYquid

Hey guys, I've got an object here in 3ds max, and I've got cables attached to the bucket of some large machinery. I've done little to no animating thus far, and I'm running into an issue when I try and think of ways to animate these cables.

I want them to follow the scoop and the arm of the machinery as it rises, but the cables are seperate pieces. They don't have to rotate around a wheel or anything either. I just want the vertices from the bottom of the cable to follow the path of the shovel as it rises, which is angled, not straight up an down.

Keep in mind, I know next to nothing about animation, so any help is appreciated.

gsokol

Hey man.

So..I'm not completely following you here...a picture would make this a little easier.

So, does the actual position of the cable move? or does it just follow a path? If the shape of the cable doesn't need to change, then you can have an animated UV layout so that the texture scrolls instead of the mesh actually moving.

xXm0RpH3usXx

an edit poly to select the appropriate verts and a linkedxform modifier maybe?

not 100% sure what youre after, a pic would help

J0NNYquid

Hey guys, sorry, but I already figured it out. I couldn't post pictures because it was a project at work, and under NDA. Thanks anyways though, I appreciate it! I'm terrible at animating, so once I studied up a bit online it was a relatively simple fix.