Hi, I've tried so many permutations and scoured the answers and forums and all over for a decent tutorial on spring joints and have had no luck. Hopefully if I word it this way some one could please chime in! :)

I want to create an Empty Game Object which will be parented to a bone in a character. I want this "null point" (a.k.a empty game object) to bounce around like a somewhat stiff spring based entirely on the motion of the character - no matter what makes it move (keyboard or external device etc). Btw, I am not using canned animations in the character, I am animating the character's skeleton programmatically (actually via a Kinect controller but that doesn't matter here).

Then I plan on having a bone (inside a strand of hair with a weight map associated to it) LookAt the springy Null Point. That way the strand of hair will animate nicely as secondary animation to the character. I figure I could put multiple springy null points attached to this character associated to bones and weight maps in the mesh so that I can simulate a bit of secondary animation and soft body type stuff easily.

The problem is I can't even get the most basic spring joint to work when driven by controls like the keyboard. I've tried this with spheres and cubes in test scenes to no luck no matter what settings.

Can anyone PLEASE ;) provide the simplest of demo example scenes and/or walkthrough exactly what settings and what parentings and what components go where to achieve this?

thanks!!