Making anemone arms bend downwards, away from center

[user0]

Hi, I don't have a lot of experience in Houdini. I go to a visual effects school that mostly teaches maya, but I am trying to use Houdini as much as possible. I'm working on creating a robotic vent anemone, but I'm having trouble getting the arms to bend down in the right way. I started off by trying to reproduce what I found in this thread. But I can't figure out how to bend the arms downwards, away from the center of the anemone. Can anyone give me any advice on how I should approach this? If I was working in maya I might try using nCloth, or something, so I thought of using the new finite element solver. But, when I try to start experimenting with that, it just kills Houdini and doesn't work.

Sorry, I'm sure this is extremely noobish.

Thanks for any help!

anemone_v17.hip

[foam]

Here's something I tried using the wire solver, hopefully it's a good place to start. I've only modified the damplinear attribute right now but you should play with the other ones too (should be in the help card/just mouse over them in elasticity on the wire object)

Also try the fan force and playing with gravity to fake buoyancy and currents.

anemone_v17_f.hip

Edited November 27, 2013 by foam

[user0]

Thanks! this looks cool, I'll see what I can do with it. I tried using a magnet SOP, and it was sort of working.But this looks way better.

Thanks again!