@CerberaThanks for looking at the file. It still rotates and randomly twists, though.
@HappyPolygonThanks, that helped me come up with this solution that seems to do what I want:
I didn't use an instance object to clone the spline, but a MoSpline, with mode set to spline
- I moved that upwards and used that as a rail spline in the Spline wrap.
- Then I disabled the "rotation from rail" in the Spline wrap. It seems that it still uses the up vector for orientation, but it looks better on very vertical movements on the spline.
Now it uses the dynamic animation but with (more) manual control over the twisting and orientation of the object. I'm not sure if this will work in all situations, but It's great for the thing I'm doing.
snake_dynamics test2.c4d