Have started some testing on my third shot on stepping on chewing gum. I am using Houdini's wire DOPs, wire solver and RBD pin constraints. The elasticity of a gum 'strand' is designed such that they are not uniform along the strand. This is so that the strand elongates more in the centre and less at the ends. Using the distance between the points, I then am able to control the width of the strand - bigger distance or higher stretch, so thinner; and smaller distance between points will mean less stretching and so wider gum width. This elasticity of the each wire (called klinear) is multiplied with a float ramp to achieve that non-uniformed elasticity and stretching.
The distance between points is then calculated with the help of a vop sop. The width of the strand is then calculated by taking the inverse of the distance between points. This width is fed to the radius parameter of the polywire SOP to finally create each strand.
Right now the strands seem to exact same look, so will need some research and testing on how to randomise the widths of different strands.
First single wire test.....
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Multiple wire test, ok but gum strands look alike...need random sizes...more testing later....
