Animating Cords in Blender 

Honestly leaving the troublshooting in is important bcs stuff can always get slightly out of hand on animations and seeing you going through it to find the solution gives us a better understanding on how to find a way around and find the missing piece. Thank you for the great tutorial, you are much appritiated.

I work every day animating cables and various plugs. It's actually very hard to do in blender, though you've chosen a fairly simple case anyway. I'd love to see more videos like this :) P.S. If you want an extra challenge, add a rubber bend between the plug and the cable, which will adapt to the cable. Assuming, of course, that the plug will not deform. Have fun :D

Your content is pure raw learning material for beginners and amateurs. The process of approaching troubleshooting steps is the far more vital step for every blender artists. Be it beginners, amateurs or pros. As an amateur maya user for past 6 years and learning blender since 3 months, i am overwhelmed with blender community.Its vast,creative,selfless, and inspiring at the same time.

this shouldn't be this hard

When you parent the plug to the plane for instancing, using "Object (Keep Transform)" is absolutely useless in this case. This is meant to keep a possible transformation given to the object being parented to a different object before, so this helps when you switch the parent from one object to another and don't want to lose the previous transformations. Since the plug was not parented to anything before, "Object" and "Object (Keep Transform)" are doing the exact same thing. Your problem here is that your plane is in the world center and the plug is away from the center. The instancing keeps the offset between the origin of the child and the parent object. If you want to instance the plug at the center of the plane, then you either have to manually set them both into the same location or use "Object (Without Inverse)" for parenting, which automatically repositions the plug to the location of the plane.

I agree, blender curves are totally unintuitive, blender curves terrify me. That said, its good of you to show the troubleshooting process, most beginner 3d artists see RU-vid videos and think that's how others work....hehe. Keep it up Derek!

Hello, I found an easier way to achieve the effect in your video, using geometric nodes to make the object move in the direction tangent to the curve.

You really don't miss, like ever. Appreciating the all of the knowledge you've put out

Infinite Thanks, Derek, this is AMAZING!! Much love and appreciation for you, Brother. 🙏🏾

Whenever I watch your tutorial or visit you website I feel very motivated to learn blender, even if it gets difficult a times. I am always stun by your animation and I am like "I won't stop learning until I become as good as this guy".

Fantastic tutorial like always 🤙🏾

why not using a null object and parent this ? it will not bend and just inherit rotation as it follows the curve.

Oh, and when the plug and chord are moving in different ditections on the Z: it is simple to explain, if one object's Deformation Axis is set to -Z and the other to Z, then they are naturally moving in opposite directions. It might make people aware of the problem if you don't edit this trial and error out of the video, but it might teach them more if you would say what the cause is - that you chose the wrong axis. Just saying working with curves can be confusing and frustrating is not really a solution and makes people think they always have to try out what works, while in reality it isn't that complicated once you understood the concept of how this works and which axes are used.

I tried tracking the camera to follow the instance. Didn't work. Any tips?

Hi Derek, I'm following the tutorial but when I create the instance there is not way that works, I tried so many thing and I can't get it done as it should, When I make the instance and apply the curve mod after parenting the plane and the male plug it's appears all off from the curve center, I dont know what I doing wrong :( need help.

Abruhhhh I tried for agesss to do something similar for this to make a grappling hook Should be able to apply this method!

Great tutorial, thanks Derek!

you are such an honest tutor. Great video. Many thanks!

Woah new tutorial from Derek. Yeay. :D

It's really good that you didn't cut out, or sped up most of the trouble shooting parts. This way people can see the troubleshooting steps and also, what is more important in my opinion is, it shows that you always have something that you need to fix, or work around. Many people just cat it out or just do a few "test runs" and than the results are always perfect, than those of us who start doing it, just get discouraged if things start to go sideways. So I appreciate you showing that there's always something that comes up and needs fixing.

Awesome! Would be interesting if you atach a camera to the plug and do the animation from that perspective :D POV rollercoaster style.

thanks for always sharing the knowledge

the troubleshooting part shows that not everything works right away, even if you don't do it for the first time. I'm glad you showed it

For everyone whose male part starts from end of the path curve. In Edit Mode on curve search for Switch Direction in F3 menu. Thnx Derek. You are my fav BlenderTuber🤝

The troubleshooting was so instrumental in my learning process as I was following the tutorial. I mean, things can always go south. Loved it❤❤

hi, can you share your pc configuration for us? I hope many of us want to know that. This will help us to build our own pc for blender.

Isn't it easier to use the follow curve constraint for the head instead of the whole Instance parenting struggle? And for the cord i would use the curve itself with a profile extrusion and start and end mapping function

Thank you for this video but how we can make PARACORD MATERIAL mor than one color like Cinma 4D thanx please make a video tutorial

Thank you for sharing this! Really like your guidance on the journey completing the material in this video!

best blender tutorials... no competition !

tHANKS for showing that im not the only one that gets knocked out by curves and its orientations, or instances and its parents, or both,!!!! i feel like i'm never learning, lol, but now i see it is unpredictable sometimes, almost everry time. big up from brazil, stay blessed

Hello from brazil master, very very good tutorial, specialy for the frustrating parts haha, lol, thats show the reality of 3d creation, sometimes it's frustating but with the right experience we call can win any challenge

the end gives bob ross ngl

👌👌👌

man seriously, learning with you is all fun, I don't even want to skip the paid promotion

ah. where were you 3 days ago? I just finished a cords animation for a project. did it the trial and error way, could have used a tutorial. :)

Fabulous!! I LIVE YOUR VIDEO SO MUCH! Thanks for the tutorial :D

Came here from the smeaf challenge and just watched the tutorial and wanted to let you know you're a good blender artist ! Thnak you

do offer courses for beginners ? if so... im very interested

❤love derek

Great take on leaving the troubleshooting, you are amazing Derek!

just found another way you can do this by having an empty with the follow path constraint than caking the head of the caple and using the copy transform and rotation contraint and it seems to work pretty well

If you can please make robot tutorial

If you can please make robot tutorial

Tricky tricky @DerekElliot....maybe you've figured out a smart solution for this little issue: how do you use the plug moving along the curve as the focus point for depth of field considering it's an instance?

You are the best of blender kind , keep it up , infact you are now knighted as a blender citizen .

Thank you again Derek Elliott for a great, and the most fun tutorial!! - I found the 'trouble shooting' bits great to follow btw.❤😀🙏

Nice to know I'm not alone on curves. Thanks for including the troubleshooting.

Hello I'm still having trouble with the curve modifier in the place were you finally fixed the problem why d curve modifier, where did the other duplicate models come from and I still haven't fix the problem

the twist method under the data properties > shape of the nurbs curve will allow you to fix it so it doesn't twist in weird ways, usually

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEED FOR MY PROJECT OMG THANK YOUU

Great and thanks a lot for sharing!!!😀

Amazing derek! Greetings from Argentina!

The silence was so loud lmfao! 💀 I feel seen .

For those who don’t see the spread value change ur render engine to cycles!

Great tutorial that feels unexpectedly… sensual?? For a blender tute anyway 😂

Please make robot tutorial

That Squarespace AD tho haha

this tutorial saved my marriage

top tier segue into the ad

Thanks for the amazing tutorial

Wow....this is impressive. Darn...

Fantastic , please don't stop tutorial

Worth it mate, worth it.

Instant Like!!!

thank you🥰🥰🥰🥰

❤❤

Wonderful

Muchas gracias!

Do these files exist on your Patreon account? Thank you

I ACTUALLY REALLY NEEDED THIS LIKE RIGHT NOW THANK YOU

i am not complaining. thank you for the video but i can't keep up. i am struggling you are way to fast and did not explained through

Why are you using the default cube? You have broken the first rule of blender... I think i will unsuscribe from your channel. 😂😂😂. Nice tutorial, btw. ❤

I'm not trying to hate, but from my experience this could be much simpler with geometry nodes right?

If your male adapter on cable is on vertical position on plane, adjust it by rotating tilt on curve path 20:35, great video Derek, thank you!