How do you make ropes?

Thanks, equalsequals! I'll try the hinge joint thing. I want rope to be as realistic as possible. Because the level consists of a platform and two cranes, so the cranes(and ropes) are important.

But the top two green "wheels" + the rope between them, can be faked without ruining the actual game as I see it. Just make the "hinge joint" from the tip of the crane and down. Dont make the "roll around barrel" part with real simulation, just fake the look with animation or place the "wheel" inside a box so you can only see it going in through a hole.

Wow! Very cool feature! But unfortunatly there is not unity3 yet, only beta for the ones who pre-ordered the product. I use indie version.

Ya, I'm sorry. I've upgraded and have access to the beta. It's well worth the upgrade. You would be able to accomplish your idea much easier in 3 with a physics cloth cylinder, but with 2.6 equalsequals is right.

it's admirable you did work with ODE http://www.ode.org in Unity.

it's an interesting observation that the usual ropes everyone uses in PhysX (just get any of the "ropes" kits from the asset store) are not suitable for a weight on the end.

@buestad How did you integrate ODE exactly? It's not working how I tried it :/ Can you help me?

@buestad First of all, thanks a lot for your answer! I stuck right in the beginning at converting ODE4j to a jar and then to a dll file... I got an ode4j.dll file but I can't call it in Unity by script... (For your information: I'm beginner ;) )

But I found out that you can use the original ODE library in Unity somehow. (http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/NativePlugins.html)

Now I don't know how to go on xD

@LucaH007 if you use the original ODE written in c++ you'll have to add some information so that the C# code knows where to find the functions inside dll. I am no expert in c++, C# or dlls in general (by far), so therfore I went through IKVM which generates C# spesific dlls.

I made a jar of a version of ODE4j which was on my drive. I think it is ode4j 0.12.0-j1.4, and compiled a dll with ikvm-8.1.5717.0. Then I included the dll, together with all dlls of IKVM (the x86 versions) and made a simple test project in Unity 5.2.2 x86.

I will PM a zip of it to you if I can figure out how :)

@buestad That would be great! Unity ropes leave me desperate :D

I think there is no way to PM via unity forum/answers so just send me the zip to this temporary email: LucaH007@cuvox.de :)

This works, but unfortunately still suffers from the same issues that all ropes made using PhysX seem to suffer from: the joints can stretch too much and go unstable is you have a mass ratio of more than ~1:10 for what's on the end of the rope. Things get better dramatically when position and velocity iteration count are increased to ~50, however this leads to big performance issues. Good find though! and certainly a solution if you don't need big forces in the rope

UPVOTE !! for most people this answer still is the best answer. they type "make rope unity" in google and arrive here because the title states "how do you make ropes?". and this script is a perfect answer for this question. this script works perfectly even with unity 5.4

This is helpful, but was confusing to get working at first (I didn't have objects far enough apart).

Add this to get a menu item that adds an example to your scene. Then hit play, open Scene panel, and grab "start", and wiggle it!

 using UnityEditor;
 // ...
 [MenuItem("Tools/Setup Rope Example")]
 static void CreateExample()
 {
     var end = new GameObject("end");
     var rb = end.AddComponent<Rigidbody>();
     rb.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeRotationX
         | RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeRotationY
         | RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeRotationZ;
     end.transform.position = Vector3.forward * 10.0f;
 
     var start = new GameObject("start");
     rb = start.AddComponent<Rigidbody>();
     rb.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeAll; // no movement so everything dangles off of it
     var rope = start.AddComponent<RopeScript>();
     rope.target = end.transform;
 }