Cloth simulation with std Max?

[Dave Black]

Well, I've never tried to do cloth on a character with reactor, but I'd imagine that adding a mesh select overtop of skin, with the verts you want effected selected, then adding a reactor cloth mod over that would do the trick just fine.

It's possible you'd have to make the dress rigid, but I doubt it.

You'd also want to use a "Deformable Mesh" collector for for the character's collision...or, use hulls.

Clothreyes 3 is really nice, btw.

-3DZ

:D

[Slugger]

3DZealot,

yeah thats what I did a mesh select with soft selection turned on, topped with a rector cloth, no deformation in sim. But second part a collector rings a small bell, the cloth mod needs a collector? tried that just now didn't seem to do the trick?

[Schnupps]

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66421

Cloth always needs a collection, for the body use deforming mesh, and set non selected vertices to unyielding in the cloth modifier.

Schnupps

[Dave Black]

There ya go!

Should work just fine...

Damnit...you're making me try it...

-3DZ

:D

[Slugger]

Aaaaaaahhh!

thanks 3DZealot & Schnupps! got it! It's just a adding a cloth collector and then, finding the start button which I was looking for in the wrong place obviuosly, on the right track now, remains to tweak it right now a lot of parameters,

Cheers,

[tonygib]

hay slugger,

Not sure if you really have your heart set on using reactors cloth, but I can't beleive that no-one said anything about Simcloth.

IMHO, reactors cloth pretty well sucks for anything but simple "game" type cloth sims. Which funny enough is what it was made for. If you want much more realistic cloth movement and don't want to buy a plug-in then go get Simcloth:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/software/simcloth3/

PS, its still std max, just with one free plugin :)

[gaggle]

He did infact mention Simcloth and how it "weren't allowed". Sounds really odd to me as well, but I guess it's a school-assignment or something?

Still, life without SimCloth.. ihhdunno.. that's crazytalk man, craaaaazytalk.

[Iain McFadzen]

the skirt is skinned to a biped and I just wanna add some fluffy moves to the skirt

If you want to make your life much much easier, don't skin or physique the skirt, let the clothsim do the work, that's the whole point. Trying to simulate cloth on an already skinned mesh makes it about 100* more complicated (cloth sims aren't designed that way), and besides, Physique is unreliable when used with lots of added modifiers.

[Slugger]

Thanks all,

yeah the Simcloth mod from chaosgroup is the way to go with clothsimulation in Max or possibly Stitch, thing is that I am helping a friend out with a setup, cloth wasnt to be a part of it, but I just wanted to put in that extra mile... it's not my call but std Max was the only way this time, If I had had a say with things it would defenately be Simcloth,

cheers,

[TimWoods]

ive fiddled with simcloth, but i was just wondering if anyone had figured out how to make cloth have thickness. Or does it only work with planes. Im after putting some thick sheets on a bed, getting them to crumple and sit over the edge.

Ta.
:D

[AshodT]

well,just assign a two sided material to your plane.
check the lil 2sided box in your mat editor.


sim cloth works mighty fine,but i had to try on reactor. simple stuff works fine,im still trying to make it work on more complexe stuff (characters and cloths).

[gaggle]

The easiest by far is faking cloth-thickness, for example add an.. Extrude modifier?.. or.. there's a downloadble plugin called Solidify. Very useful in simulating a flat sheet of cloth, and then adding the geometry-thickness afterwards. You can even meshsmooth it as a final step to get nice round curved wrinkles and whatnot if that's your thing. Good stuff for sure. There's some collision-issues you need to work out in some specific cases since the added geometry of course isn't collision-calculated, but other than that it ought to hold up nicely.

Getting the heavy cloth "feel" is of course a different matter, tweaking the cloth-settings should do the trick there.

Simulating an actual thick piece of cloth is also a possbility, but it get's intensly slow to compute. I don't recommend doing that. Cheating is much faster and easier.. mm.. and they say you can't learn about life using a computer ;).

[Slugger]

Iain McFadzen,

just did a test with Simcloth(could't resist it, and yes it's far better than reactor) and me thinks you have to skin it before simulation(ie the simcloth mod goes on top of the skin mod), and make a selection of verts not to be included in sim with a meshselect or similar, do you mean this appraoch work different when using say reactor? Simcloth seems happy as a pig in mud doing a sim in conjuction with a skin mod beneath it and calculates with no problems as far as I can see,

cheers,

[Iain McFadzen]

Nope, you shouldn't skin it at all. You make the character model (or a low-poly proxy) into a deflection object, also with the simcloth mod, then use simcloth's Vertex SO mode to stick whatever verts you want to the character, using the "conform to mesh" option if necessary. No need for any mesh selects at all (although due to the way Max's stack works mesh selects will still work in some cases).

[gaggle]

Oh just a random little thing regarding SimCloth: dwelve into how it can shrink an object before calculations starts. There are three procentages, if memory serves, for X Y and Z, that you can use in such a way as to make the clothobject fit tight around the character. You can't, nor should you, make a shirt fit tightly around the characters arms and whatnot by modeling it tight, this will generally only cause issues with the way SimCloth computes collisions. Instead you shrink the whole thing down using said spinners, and voila, it'll fit snuggly. Once it does, hit the button that makes the current status as the start-pose, and you'll have a nicely fitting, nicely behaving, shirt. Or pants. Or, you know, whatever.

I haven't actually played with it myself (haven't had a cloth-using MAX project for quite a while), so it's theoretical knowledge. Just so that's mentioned :).

[TimWoods]

Originally posted by gaggle
The easiest by far is faking cloth-thickness, for example add an.. Extrude modifier?.. or.. there's a downloadble plugin called Solidify.



thanks gaggle. although sim cloth is great, on some things you also need thickness.
where can i get solidify?

tim

[gaggle]

I'm guessing maxplugins.de or scriptspot.com. If you can't find it yourself I'll go take a looksee around. Should be findable though, it's apparently a fairly widely-used plugin.

[grury]

Hi all,
I also been trying to figure out the best way to use the new Simcloth, I'll be using it to mainly give some sec. motion to the characters garments and not a full on cloth simulation. what I've been trying is to Skin the clothes and then put the cloth mod on top of it (somehow when I use meshselect b4 the simulation doesnt go further than 1 or 2 frames, a bug that I hope is something to do with the fact that I'm still using Max 5 rather than 5.1).
I'm quite intregued tho with Iain McFadzen point, not using skin/Physique at all on the garments...if you dont skin the clothes it seems to me that the mesh just goes all over the place specially with fast and extreme movements.
As anyone else have any clues on this one or any other ideas how to best get this effect (clothing sec. motion), I'll be running towards a very tight deadline so any tricks to make my life easier will help.

Cheers

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.