by IK3D·Simulation
Images © IK3D. Used for product review; image policy.
Gravity Rope stands out in the superhive library for keeping rope, cable and chain simulation live in the viewport: draw, press Play, and adjust with GPU-driven feedback rather than waiting on bakes.
Gravity Rope is a simulation add-on for Blender that handles ropes, cables, chains and pendulums. Built for motion designers and 3D artists, it lets you draw a rope, press Play, and simulate it live in the viewport, with collisions, self-collision, wind and force fields, stretch and breakage. There's no long bake and no modal to manage.
The simulation runs on a GPU solver (WGPU / XPBD), rewritten from the ground up on a modern GPU engine described as faster, more stable and accurate. It can simulate dozens of ropes at once in real time, even on large scenes. The live workflow caches every frame as you play, so you can scrub back and replay instantly without a manual sync step.
Look and behaviour are both adjustable. Eight ready-made Geometry Nodes skins cover rope, chain, phone cable, ribbon, beads and braided sleeve, with twist and section control, and you can build your own. Material presets include Cotton, Nylon, Paper, Rope, Shoelace, Elastic, Cable and Pendulum. Ropes can be hand-drawn, scattered onto a mesh, or bridged between two objects, then baked to Geometry Nodes or USD BasisCurves.
Gravity Rope is best for motion designers and 3D artists using Blender who want real-time rope, cable, chain and pendulum simulation in the viewport.
Gravity Rope is completely free to download and use.
Gravity Rope lists compatibility with Blender 3.5 through 5.1 and is marked as Blender Extension compatible. Its rebuilt GPU solver is built around a modern GPU engine on Blender 5.x, using WGPU and XPBD. If you're running a version inside that range, the add-on should install as a standard Blender extension. For the exact behaviour on your specific build, check the developer's page, since GPU features can depend on your Blender version and hardware setup.
Gravity Rope simulates live in the viewport, so you don't wait on a long bake to see results. Press Play and it simulates while caching every frame, then you can scrub back and replay instantly with no modal and no manual sync step. When you're ready to hand off, it offers a one-click bake to Geometry Nodes or USD BasisCurves with autoload, which removes the older Alembic dependency for pipeline work.
Gravity Rope ships with eight ready-made Geometry Nodes skins, including rope, chain, phone cable, ribbon, beads and braided sleeve, each with twist and section control. You also get full curve control over radius, twist, section and bevel, and you can taper thickness along the rope with a Curve shape for thinner ends or a fatter middle. If none of the presets fit, a New skin button lets you add custom Geometry Nodes groups that stay editable after baking.
Gravity Rope supports several creation modes beyond a single hand-drawn path. You can cluster or scatter ropes onto a mesh, or bridge a rope between two objects, which covers setups from loose cabling to connected runs. Endpoint aim can lock a rope's tip to a connector's orientation for clean cable ends, and you can extract vertex positions to attach your own objects to the simulation. The developer also lists further scatter and attachment options as coming next.
Gravity Rope is listed as free in this catalog, and it's distributed under the GPL license as a Blender add-on. Licensing terms on marketplaces can change over time, and the developer offers it in more than one tier for freelance versus studio and production use, so for the current pricing and what each option includes it's best to check IK3D's own page. That's also the place to confirm which support level applies to your situation.
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