To add a new Rope to a scene go to the Prefabs folder of the Full Rig install, in there you will find 'Rope Prefab', this is a simple single rope with no end objects applied, drag this to the scene and place it where you want.

Once the rope is in the scene and the Move Tool is selected you will see two position handle gizmos, one is for the start of the rope and the other one is for the end of the rope.

By default dragging and end will only move that end, if you hold down the 'B' key then both ends of the rope will be moved at the same time. Usually when making ropes you will want to attached the ends to other objects in the scene, you can either do this by selecting the object in the Inspector in the 'Start' and 'End' section or you can use the much easier way of using the built in snapping system.

There are two different modes to the snapping, the first snaps the end of the rope to a position but does not attach it, and the second way snaps to the object and attaches it. Once a rope is attached to an object in the scene moving that object will move the end of the rope as well. To activate the snapping you just need to hold down the 'Z' key for snapping without attaching, or the 'X' key to snap and attach. When these keys are held down you will see small circles appear in the scene showing all the possible snap points. If you drag the rope end to be near one of the circles a line will be drawn to that target and its name will be displayed, if you release the mouse button the snap action will happen.

The targets for attaching can be normal GameObjects in the scene in which case the snap circle will be shown where the object position is, or you can also attach rope ends to other ropes, in this case the middle of any rope in the scene is also show as a target. If you attach an end of the rope to another rope you will then see a 'Move' gizmo appear, dragging this will move the attach point along the target rope.

There maybe occasions when more than one object is in the same position, if that is the case the message will show that there are multiple choices and pressing the 'C' key will cycle through the objects.

Once an end of the rope is attached to a target object the position gizmo will no longer appear for that end. If the start of the rope is attached there will be a new set of gizmos displayed. The dot in the middle can be clicked to disconnect the object. You can also Disconnect an object by clicking the 'Disconnect' button in the inspector, or you can press 'A' to disconnect the start of the rope or 'S' to disconnect the end of the rope. If the rope is not attached pressing 'A' or 'S' will reattach the rope end to the nearest object in range.

Also on the gizmo at the start of the range are 3 slider handles, one can be used to change the length of the rope. The next can be used to change the width of the rope, this will change the width at both the start and end of the rope, there are values in the inspector as well to change the star and end widths separately. And lastly there is the stretch option, this controls how much the rope will sag when the distance between the start and end attach points is less than the rope length.

At the other end of the rope there is also another Disconnect gizmo.

Full Rig comes with a selection of rope and chain types for you to use and when you are editing a rope if you press the '3' key you can cycle through all the rope styles in the project until you get the one you need. Ropes dont have to be single stranded, you can have two, four six rope meshes for using with pulleys, or you can have a chain object even a Hammock or objects like that.

You will likely want to add you own ropes to the system to suit your projects needs. If so you need to model the rope mesh so that the pivot point is at one end of the rope and the other end of the rope is 1m away on the X axis, with Z axis going across and the Y axis up. The mesh will be scaled along the xaxis to fit the distance between the end points.

It is important that there are enough vertices along the length of the rope object so that the Vertex shader can deform the rope smoothly. Below is an example of a chain mesh showing the Pivot point and Axis direction.

When editing a rope you can cycle through different rope type with the '3' key. To add a rope to this you need to create a 'Rope Type asset. To do this go to the 'Assets/Create Other/Full Rig/Rope Type' menu. This will create a new Rope Type asset in your project, rename it to something suitable.

In the inspector you can then select the mesh that the rope will use, if you have created your own rope object and imported it into Unity then you would select the mesh for that object. You can also select the Material to use for the rope. Note this material should have the Full Rig Rope Shader applied to it.

The Rope Num value is not currently used but defines the number of strands the rope has. This will be used later to filter rope end objects.

Once that is done then the Rope Type will be available when you cycle through rope types with the '3' key when editing a rope.

Full Rig allows you to not only add ropes but you can also add objects at the start and end of the ropes allowing you have such things as pulleys or shackles.

Once a rope is in the scene you can select an end object in the Inspector in the 'Start Connect' and 'End Connect' sections. The object selected here will be repositioned at the start or end of the rope. It is important that the end objects have their pivots in the correct place which is the attach point on the mesh. If you have an object that the pivot is not in the right place then you can always make that object a child of an empty game object and adjust the pivot that way or make use an asset to adjust the pivot point of the mesh. It also important for the Z direction of the end object to be pointing along the direction the rope will be going.

An easier way to set the rope end objects is to press the '1' key to cycle through the defined end objects in the project for the start of the rope, and press '2' to cycle through the end objects for the end of the rope. These objects are defined by a scriptable object so you can add you own end objects to cycle through very easily.

When an end object is selected for the rope you will see a small white square at that end of the rope, this square indicates how far along the rope will be used to calculate the rotation of the end object, you can change this value in the inspector in the 'Start Connection' and 'End Connection' sections. Note when you edit these values you are editing the saved value that is used by all the ropes that use that particular end object. The 'Connect Tangent' value controls how far along the rope the look happens.

Also for the end objects you can define the point at which the rope actually starts, this is useful for things like pulleys when you don't actually want the rope going all the way to the attach point. For more info on these values see the End Objects section.

You can control per rope the point at which the rope starts for both the start and end of the rope, this adds to the values defined in the Rope End Object itself. You can also control the width of the rope which allows you to have a thick rope tapering to a thin rope if you needed it. And if your rope type is more than a single strand, ie for say 4 rope pulleys the Horizontal and Vertical Strand Adjust values allow you to adjust the spacing of the rope strands to match the end objects being used.

Full Rig comes with various rope ends include for you to get you started but at some point you will want to use your own objects, this section will guide you through that process.

To start with your model should have its pivot not in the middle of the object but at the point where the object will connect to the world, so in the pulley example below the pivot is located in the end shackle. Also it is important for the Z forward direction to be along the direction from the center of the object to the pivot. This is so the lookat calculation will rotate the object correctly when attached to the end of the rope. The Axis can be seen in the image below.

Once you have your model imported into Unity make a prefab out of it and add it to your project in the normal way. Then you should create a 'Rope End' asset by going to the 'Assets/Create Other/Full Rig/Rope End Object' this will create a new Rope End object in your project. Rename it to a suitable name.

When you select it the inspector will show various values which you can use to set up the object so it can be used by the rope system. The first param 'Rope Start' is used to tell the rope how far along the mesh should start, so for example if your end object was a small knot then you can leave this as 0 as you would want the rope to start at the attach point, but if your end object was say a rope loop then you would not want the rope mesh to go all the way to the start as it would look odd, you would want the rope to start at the end of the loop object, so increase this value to move the end.

It is best to edit these values when the object is actually used by a rope as it is easier to see what the values do. So if the object is being used by a rope these values will appear in the rope inspector and changing them there will change the actual scriptable object in the project so the values will be used by all the ropes using this end object.

Next is the Tangent value, this is used to compute the rotation of the end object and is the distance down the rope the look at will use as the target vector for the look at. So again if you had a very small knot as the end then the tangent value would be very small, but if you had a big long rope loop then the tangent value would need to be bigger. Again best to edit this when the object is being used.

Adjust X and Adjust Y are used when the object is used with a multi strand rope, it will adjust the spacing of the rope strands vertically and horizontally. This is useful for say pulley objects so you can align the ropes correctly.

Rope Type is not currently used but says which ropes the rope end object can be used with, this will likely be implemented in a near release, it will filter the rope ends when cycling through them to only the ones that having matching rope types to the actual rope type being used.

And finally is the prefab to use as the object, and this is where you will select the prefab you made earlier. Once done then this object will be available to use as an end object and will appear when you cycle the end objects when editing a rope.