Hasta La Motion!

So I’m trying to model and animate a paperclip. The paperclip would start off looking just like a paperclip, and then it would uncurl slowly into a U shape and then kind of get up and walk around using the tips of the U shape as legs.

Which would the best way to model and rig this? I’ve tried a couple of things but keep ending up in epic fail. I’m not so great at Maya and so maybe there’s a simple way to get this done that I don’t know of?

I’ve tried drawing a paperclip shape with a nurbs cuve, and then extrude a nurbs circle along it. The problem I ran into with this is that when the circle extrudes around the curve, it folds and does not keep its tube shape. Thats as far as I got with this experiment. I don’t know how I would rig this to animate like I want.

The second thing I thought of doing was to model a tube and then rig it with a long spine like rig. This would give me great flexibility with the movement, but again, I would probably have to paint weights etc to make sure it does not fold when I bend it etc.

The third thing that I’m trying now (and have got furthest with) is using bend deformers. I made a long tube, added a bend def. and bent the first part. Then added another one further along, changed the low bound/high bound (the one facing the already bent side) to 0 so it would not move the already bent side, and then make another bend. And then repeat this once more. Doing this, I have a decent enough looking model. The problem with this is, if I change the bend value on one of the inside deformers, it bends the entire arm and the bend deformers further out do not stick to the geometry. They get left behind. I’ve tried parenting but that has not worked.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I would really appreciate some help on this I’ve been breaking my head over this. I’m a VFX guy and just need this thing done for my project which is mainly a comp. I though this would be simple enough but its driving me insane! Could someone please help me??

I’ve attached my Maya file here too if someone wants to see what I’m trying.

Thanks!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20947072/Bend%20Def.ma