Untangling a Phone Cord Effect. ARGH!

[Filip Vandueren]

Well…

to state the obvious: couldn’t you film a tangled phone cord.

At least to have some decent reference footage, because even in 3D, this is no cakewalk.

I wouldn’t even know how to start in 2D, short of the smoke & mirrors / misdirection / jump cut stuff you described.

[Steve Roberts]

Yeah … there are a lot of simple real world situations that can be a nightmare to attempt in CG.

However, on the sort-of-abstract side, you could draw an open mask which starts at one side of the screen (vertex 1), moves straight across until it approaches the center of the screen (make vertex 2), then make mask points randomly in the center, like a blob. Then come back to the same Y-value as the straight line, but right of center, and make 2 mask points so the line ends straight over at offscreen right. (you might want to use rotobezier for the squiggly vertices)

So you now have a horizontal straight line with a squiggly blob in the middle.

Now, make a guide at the horizontal line and enable snapping to guides. Starting from the first and last “blobby” vertex you animate each vertex so it travels down to the horizontal line, as if you were pulling the string from both ends. As you go, you’ll have to also drag out the vertices on the line offscreen.

It’s not realistic, fast or automatic, but it might work for you.

If you want to do this with an image of a curly phone cord, you might be able to use Digital Anarchy’s path distort plugin.

Good luck,
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

… and apply effect>render>stroke so you can actually see the line. 🙂

Steve