Joint Momentum

I need to add some physics to an animated character’s tail. Currently hinge joints are working okay, but they don’t respond to the character’s movement. For example, if the character turns or moves, the joint is not affected.

You can see the issue here:
http://gfycat.com/WhisperedInfamousHellbender (ignore the stretched mesh, I just moved the tail away to see it easier)

Bones are set up like this:

alt text

It seems like if the tail is a child of the body, then it won’t keep momentum, but if the tail is an entirely different GameObject it works fine. You could use a fixed joint to attach the tail to something external, and have that external thing connect to the body with a hinge joint.

Side note: If there’s a checkbox for “don’t calculate my physics relative to my parent” I’d love to find it.