Simulating a Rope with Fake Dynamics in After Effects

This tutorial introduces you to a simple way to animate a rope, lasso, cape, cloth or even hair. 

Fake Dynamics is the brainchild of Wasib Qureshi with help from Colin Harvie, Pchelovek1205 and Daniel Gies. It is a script which you can run inside Adobe After Effects to link nulls to a driver (parent) null and have them respond to it. 

This is my first YouTube collaboration (sort of) as I get interrupted by a real cowboy, Buffalo Billy (@nolips1) who tells me how wrong I am when trying to lasso a goat.  It’s bit of fun I hope you enjoy. 

After the interruption, I explain where to find the AE Fake Dynamics script, how to install it and then show you a couple of simple ways to use it.  I start with a dangling rope which sways around as I move the top of it. Next I quickly animate a very basic lasso looping around a goat’s neck and yanking it off screen. During the tutorial I also make use of AE’s included script “Create Nulls from Paths” and Dan Ebbert’s Overshoot expression.

Links mentioned:

• AE Fake Dynamics over on Wasib’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBSouq8feSc
• Dan Ebbert’s Overshoot Expression: https://www.motionscript.com/articles/bounce-and-overshoot.html
  
  
• Ronn Lucas: https://www.youtube.com/nolips1
• Ronn’s Fan Site: https://www.ronnlucas.net/