Stack of objets wobble around without joints

[sturdy olive]

Hey. I need to create a stack of objects and they must move around like a rope, but without joints like in this example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5BZPXj-bo8). I Can't figure it out how to do it without joints

[analog ginkgo]

Is it exactly this or something like this what you want?

[sturdy olive]

exactly like the video. The difference is that my character moves omnidirectional with a joystick

[analog ginkgo]

My first thought would be to consider the objects as a polyline and run IK solver like FABRIK on it with some extra constraints like trying to keep the polyline as straight as possible and upright

[sturdy olive]

polyline? Is it a external asset or something?

[analog ginkgo]

no, math

[sturdy olive]

never heard of it. Can you show me an example?

[sturdy olive]

Polyline. I'll take a look at it. Meanwhile I tried to make something simpler and I think I got it. I made a stack of objects and made each object Lerp position to one another and altering the lerp time as the stack goes up

as for the rotation, I made every object to lerp the rotation of one another relative to the stack origin and rotated the origin to face the direction of the character movement

not exactly how I wanted to solve, but it worked

    {
        for (int i = 0; i < bodies.Count; i++)
        {
            float rate = Mathf.Lerp(rateRange.x, rateRange.y, (float)i / (float)bodies.Count);

            bodies[i].position = Vector3.Lerp(bodies[i].position, i > 0 ? bodies[i - 1].position + (-bodies[i - 1].forward * offset) : transform.position, rate);
            bodies[i].rotation = Quaternion.Lerp(bodies[i].rotation, i > 0 ? bodies[i - 1].rotation : transform.GetChild(0).rotation, rate);
        }
    }```

        Quaternion directionRotation = Quaternion.Euler(Mathf.Lerp(0, -stackMaxTilt, actualVelocity / speed) + 90, 0, 90);

        bodyStack.localRotation = Quaternion.Lerp(bodyStack.localRotation, directionRotation, turnSmoothTime * Time.deltaTime);``` I put this on the Player's Update method

this is the result

I don't know why they asked me to do this without joints, but I think this is a good result. Thanks for the help!

[analog ginkgo]

Doubt this will look the same with a ton of objects but look cool nontheless. Why no joints? A lot of connected joints tends to be very unstable so doing it by code might be better solution

[sturdy olive]

they asked me specifically not to use joints. Don

Don't know why though

[analog ginkgo]

I think I worded it poorly, I meant that using lot of interconnected joints can cause unstable behaviour and the simulation exploding all over the places, that's likely why

[sturdy olive]

oh, that makes sense

this is the result with 16 bodies. Looks a little like the example

[analog ginkgo]

Surprisingly good, great job