Pull on one end of a rope to straighten the rest

[Wetfoot]

Greetings,
I need a character to be fly fishing and I was wondering how I could move one end of the line to straighten out the rest of it.
I am new to this animation stuff and was hoping for a short cut.
Thanks,
Mel

[Danimal]

If you set up the line with a chain of bones, you could make the far end of the chain the parent, allowing you to tug on the near end to straighten it out.

You could also lock the far end bone, which should also make it immune to the movement of the others.

[heyvern]

Using bones is one way to do that. However it might be easier to simply animate the points.

You could "eyeball" the "length" of the line and guess at keeping the length while straightening the line. This wouldn't require a ton of points on the line and might be simpler.

[Wetfoot]

Thanks,
I was also thinking bones so I will give that a try first.
I have 88 bones to the line so far.
Not sure that is enough. I was afraid it would look too ridgit.
I am having the charactor do a lot of different casts on several animations so the easier the better.
Thanks,
Mel

[Víctor Paredes]

I have 88 bones to the line so far.
Not sure that is enough. I was afraid it would look too ridgit.

Uhm, 88 is a lot of bones. I think maybe 4 or 5 bones and a vector line with curvature should make the work. The more bones you put in a rope, the more difficult it becomes to animate them.

[hayasidist]

my general approach to things like this is to have the straight line as the frame 0 set up, then on frame 1 push the points to the "curled up" position and, when you want it to straighten (say between frames 100 and 120 or whatever), copy the frame 1 keys to frame 100 then "reset points" on frame 120. if you don't like the effect, add a few extra tweens.

as it seems you'll need multiple "straight" (for the different casts?) you could do this with a switch. or just tweak the "baseline straight"...

[slowtiger]

I'd do this with point motion - after all it's just a thin black line.

Tip: create that line on a grid first, with about 10 points in regular distance. Have the point of origin match one end of the line. If you need the straight line somewhere in animation, just copy from frame 0 and rotate. Work from that point on, forwards or backwards.