Ideas to animate a cloak?

#1

Hello!
Could you help with any ideas of how to animate a large cloak (skinned to bones, blue in the picture). If not in Builder, perhaps I’d better use some other method in other 3d application?

Thanks in advance,
Regards

#2

Why don’t you animate you character in MB and then use cloth simulation in some other software… unless the cape has to move on it’s own (it’s aliiiiiive :slight_smile:

Or you can use the bones as character extension and handkey it…

#3

Hi,

I agree with SebO, you can animate character in MB, and the cloth simulate as second pass in any other software (I prefer Maya nCloth in simular cases)

P.S. In MB it would be better to have a character’s mesh without any cloth or it will block character’s visibility and accessibility.

#4

Thanks for your suggestions!

We animate the character in MB, just hiding the cloak and its bones.
We first tried to animate using cloth in Max, but the idea failed, for the Character moved too fast (unnaturally really, as this is supposed to be an “anime-like” movement). Besides, we have to preserve poses for the cloak, since these are game animations with poses. Perhaps Maya cloth simulator is better - haven’t yet experimented… Guess, will have to soon.
We figured another way - 3DMax Reactor Ragdoll for it. Works next to perfect :slight_smile: But still animation had to be slowed down twice!
Then transfered cloak bones animation back to MB, made them Character Extention and applied poses. So far looks ok. Not perfect, of course, for poses spoil all the natural secondary movements and make cloth jerky.

#5

Hi,

We did as Anna wrote. Had a game project with bone skinned skirts and animated it with max reactor and back to maya. This works good. However if your project is manga style I’d go hand animating cloak in longer sequences would use reactor and keyframe tweaks.

#6

Glad to hear this :slight_smile: I feel that this is the right way now, thanks!

#7

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