Paul Forwood

Sounds great!

Thanks, Mark. I tried that but it didn't work. I still have a clean version of the model so I will continue trying various cloth settings and keep looking for the things that cause the problems as well as the things that work well. Yes, I am going to try that one too. Thanks, Will. Still too early to say, Daniel. I can see lots of potential for certain things but I am finding it difficult to get full predictability from the little that I have learnt while testing cloth. I have just been trying various simcloth settings on a simple sack model walk-cycle: The top two rows are all empty sacks while the bottom row uses one internal deflector for the first sack and the last two use two internal deflectors. I should mention that the middle row had Air Drag set to 0.1 also. No major breakthroughs to report yet.

Nice work, Bendy! Awww. Poetic justice for the mo-cap guy? Have you tried stripping out all the keyframes for the eyes and brow and doing those by hand? That would still save you an enormous amount of time but help to bring more life to the face.

Hmmm. That gives me something new to think about. The choreography has just two objects in it, (the ground object and the character). The poncho, the hat and the cigar have been added to the Squetchy Sam model's geometry and 8 CPs around the neck of the poncho have been assigned to the chest geometry bone. The hat has it's own bone which is a child of the head_back geometry bone, (or similar name), and the cigar's bone is a child of one of the lip bones. Perhaps when I did this parenting it messed something up? The cloth materials were applied to groups in the model window. The additional geometry was added to the model after the action was created which might have caused problems as it was copied and pasted with cloth material already assigned. I guess that I shouldn't be surprised that something broke. Oh well. It was just another experiment. Thanks, David.

Something strange has occurred in A:M13s! If you look at the attached image you can see that the patches have corrupted somehow. The change occurred while I was checking the normals of the Squetchy Sam model. I found that there was on patch on his back which was facing the wrong way so I flipped it. All the normals are facing out now but look at the state of the model in a choreography! The model looks okay in the model window but when I look at it in a choreography it is corrupted. Rendering doesn't improve the image either. I have reinstalled A:M13s but that doesn't make any difference. Has anyone else seen this? Are there any known fixes? ------------------------------------------------------------------ EDIT: It seems that something corrupted the Rig when the normal was flipped. Is this likely? I have tried creating a new action but the FACE rig produces bad results. Not sure if this is all related to Simcloth yet. Oh, by the way, the reason that my eye was drawn to the flipped normal was because a CP on the SimCloth was being massively displaced directly above it. It seems that normals DO have an affect on cloth.

Just another bad cloth day: (blooper) I just threw a TSM2 rig in there and haven't done any of the intermediate bones, or any proper animating, so it looks strange. I just needed to start testing Simcloth with some more typical motion. The distorting CPs have got me puzzled at the moment. I thought that I had eliminated that by removing 5 point patches from the cloth groups but it is back with a vengeance. I'm going back to just using cloth for the bottom part of the gown and the cape. The sleeves and hood will have dynamic bones and the rest will not have dynamics. This is probably the best solution for a faster and more robust workflow. I'm looking forward to Rich (Entity) Jackson's forthcoming Simcloth documentation.

Rodney, this model was built in that manner originally. The only cloth that I was going to use was going to be on the cape and the bottom of the gown, from just below the hips. I was going to use dynamic bones for the sleeves and the arms only went just past the elbow. I will probably still do a version like that but after seeing Will's test and the examples that I have seen in the thread that I posted a link to, above, I was determined to at least try draping a full body to see how Sim Cloth would handle it. The underlying geometry can be deleted at any time that I decide I don't need it. This is a very low patch model and I want to keep it that way as far as possible. I know that SimCloth will perform better with denser meshes so there will be some splines added when absolutely neccessary. Thanks, Vance. Agreed, but I have hope that a half decent result is attainable now.

Will, thanks again for pointing me to those properties. They make ALL the difference! I discovered that 5 point patches are indeed a problem! Where I was having problems with CPs jumping out, sometimes enormous distances, I noticed the cloth patches where always sitting over a 5 point deflecting patch. By removing a few CPs from the deflector group and the cloth group I was able to remove that massive distortion completely. So, as I originally suspected, 5 point patches should be avoided on the deflectors, just like hair emitters . (At least that is what I am seeing at the moment). The SimCloth properties in the choreography are so important in getting the right control over the cloth and that is what I am going to start playing with next. Collision radius was set too high by default for close fitting cloth so I turned that down to .5 and so far so good. Here is the last test: Lots to tweak and test. He needs a new gown too. This one was designed to be a static chest without cloth so the splines are not running the right way. I also want to put the Squetch Rig into this model. I must say I am so encouraged by seeing the cloth calm down, and by finding that 5 point trouble maker, and by having those illusive Sim Cloth properties pointed out to me that I feel all positive about SimCloth again. Thanks, everyone, for the help! ---------

Ah! (light goes on) Thanks, Will!

Dhar, I had to do some searching through the forums to find a definition for "custom groups". This doesn't appear to be used in the versions of A:M that I have been testing Sim Cloth with, (A:M 13 and 14 beta4). I finally found this excellent thread which helped me understand where much of my confusion is coming from: A:M13 Sim Cloth I had not tried Sim Cloth until now and so many of the terms that people were using, such as "attachment, custom groups" and various properties were foreign to me. They seem to have been removed in the current version of Sim Cloth. In A:M 13 and 14 Sim Cloth is applied just like any other material. There are no custom groups or attachments that I can see. I like this straight forward approach to applying cloth but it seems that some control has been lost in the transition. Reading the thread above it seems that the "attachment" group was important in adding stability to cloth. I would go back to A:M 12 but I started this project in A:M 13 so there is no way back for my models. Will, what version of A:M did you do that test in? There isn't a "collision tolerance" property in A:M 13 or 14 that I am aware of. If you know better please show me where it is hiding. Yes, I confirm what you say regarding density, 3 point patches, 5 point patches and hooks. I expected problems with 3 and 5 point patches but I haven't noticed any yet.

That helps, Steve, thanks! Not quite the implementation I was imagining, (I was thinking rubber band lines that show up when you grab a control null and which draw between the control null and the neutral position/origin of that null). The method that you have used is similar to the FACE rig and works very well but it is not clear, after moving the nulls around, which guide they belong to.

Thanks, Charlie! The toony character is a slightly modified version of Zaryin's Squetchy Sam model, rigged by David Simmons. He stands 157cm tall, (approx. 5'2"). The robed and caped character is quite tall at 203 cm, (6'8"). This one isn't rigged yet. So yes they both conform to "normal" adult sizes. Neither have been scaled in the choreography.

Sorry, Jody. I missed this earlier but having seen it now I 'm not sure what you mean. What is the sub step calculation? I may be using Sim Cloth incorrectly. I am just creating groups on the model. I drop my cloth and deflectors on these and do any property tweaking in the model window. I then jump back to the choreography, run the cloth simulation and if all goes well I render out the test to a QT movie. Is this the correct way to use Sim Cloth? I have watched Bob Croucher's TechTalk on TWO cloth, which incidentally was made exactly one year ago today and which was very helpful, but it is refering to an older version of Sim Cloth. The current version does not have the same properties as the version in the video. I wish the programmers would document the features that they implement. It's all guess work otherwise. I spend more time trying to find out the things that should have been documented in the first place than doing anything creative. Some questions: 1) Bob Croucher mentions something in the TechTalk about keeping cloth at least half a centimetre away from deflectors. The current version dosn't have a configurable collision radius so what is the mimimum safe distance between cloth and deflectors? 2) What is it that makes cloth suddenly jump out and how can that effect be dampened or removed? ( See attached: ) 3) Do normals affect the way cloth surfaces react with one another? Thanks, Stian.

Well I have been continuing my Sim Cloth tests but have not really progressed much. So much trial and error. So little to show for it. Dropping a cloth square onto another object is probably one of the easier things to do with Sim Cloth. Once you start using it with more complex objects it produces lots of "unsolvable" errors. Also getting a cloth material that will conform to the underlying shape and adding motion is just escaping me. I have a better grasp on "Mass" now though. It seems to simply set the relationship between colliding CPs, indicating which one has the greater force. Here is another A:M13s test: I'm going to go back to very simple objects and try various mesh densities next. --------------------------------------------------------

The way that I have been applying cloth is by dropping the cloth and deflector materials onto groups while in modelling mode. I leave the materials' properties in their default state and only adjust the properties of the materials within the groups. I haven't had any problems with attributes vanishing.

Check the normals on your model. If the normals are inverted then the displacement will appear to be reversed.

And then you can start the texturing. Beautiful models!

Thanks, Jody! Robert, I know what you are saying but I would like to avoid looking for awkward workarounds if possible. I would just like to see Sim Cloth nailed down so that we can understand better how to use it and to predict it's behavior when making adjustments to it's properties. A TechTalk that goes through each of the properties would be very useful but I don't expect that is a priority for Hash Inc at the moment. Here is a test that I tried in A:M13s: I think that it is pretty amazing how Sim Cloth handled this test! It uses two different cloth settings. The cape uses the default Sim Cloth settings while the cloth squares that are dropped onto the mannequin all use the following settings: Mass = 1 Self Collide = On Friction = 1000 Stretch/Shear Stretch Stiffness = 1 Shear Stiffness = 1 SS Damping = 0.1 Bend Angle Bend Angle Stiffness = 0.1 Bend Angle Damping = 1 Air Drag = .001 The mannequin and the floor are deflectors with the subdivisions set to 16. If I can keep the flexibility of this cloth while avoiding all the stretching at the top I will be getting close to something useful for my current needs though there are still plenty of other tests to be done to see how folded seams will hold up and tests to do with textures and hair. Also I would like to build a small selection of cloth types and test them with things like Forces. Does anyone have a good explanation of how damping works? Okay, I understand, from reading Bob Croucher's Sim Cloth thread, that it controls the amount of resistance that the cloth has to deforming when undergoing changes in speed and direction. (At least that is how I interpreted it). But does it have complete control over that feature of cloth or does it share control of deformation, due to changes in velocity, with other Sim Cloth properties? More testing needed. ------------------

Yes but it doesn't work for everything. The following example is another test I did in A:M 14 beta 4: I made a few adjustments after this and rerendered. The cape developed a glitch and wouldn't drop down from a raised position, even though the mannequin was stationary. I saved the project and reopened it and noticed that the mannequin was inside out so I flipped the normals, adjusted a few CPs, made some adjustments to the hair, made some changes to the choreography, ran the simulation and it looked good. So I saved the project, got some exceptions and finally a crash. Rebooted A:M, loaded the project and the model was completely trashed. (hmmm. someone has removed text from this post!) Going back to A:M 13 for these cloth tests until the next Beta arrives.

So does mass = cloth weight? If mass is a control for air resistance then what is "Air drag" for? Yes. I've noticed that too. So to be sure that you're seeing what you're working on you have to save and then reopen the project every time you adjust any of the properties. Hopefully finding some good cloth settings for various types of cloth will enable people to avoid all this tweaking, saving reloading, simulating over and over and over again.

Looks great! I hope you are going to try particle hair on this guy.

The project that I am working on requires alot of dynamic interaction between layers of cloth and hair so I have been testing these features recently. I decided to start a thread to show what I find and hopefully get some answers on the way. I don't know if there are any differences between Sim Cloth in A:M 13 and A:M 14 but I am testing both. This is a 2 second movie, from A:M 14 Beta 4, which shows that Sim Cloth on Sim Cloth is possible: The missing patches on frame 0 is an A:M 14 bug, I think. It always has a render problem on the first frame of the QT movies that I have rendered from Beta4. I have noticed that when I render to Sorenson 3 format from A:M 14 that along with the QT movie I get a "sinfo" file. Does anyone know what these files are and whether they can be turned off and deleted? I am assuming that A:M 14 is creating these sinfo files for it's own purposes as I have never seen them before the Beta 4 release. I am still not at all clear about the practical purpose of most of the Sim Cloth properties. For instance what is the result of increasing, or decreasing, the mass property of cloth? The only thing that I can determine so far is that if I crank it up much above 5 I get the "unsolvable" error message.

Heavy! (yet light enough to allow for a whole convoy in A:M). As outstanding as ever, Stian

Wow! That is a very lively face rig, Steve! I love the range of expression that can be achieved so quickly from each of the control nulls. Just a few things that would really nail it: 1) Character dependent limits. Do you have any plans to put some kind of limits on the range of movement for the control nulls? 2) While playing with your Simple Simon model I kept wishing that there was some way to refind the neutral position for each of the control nulls. (It would be cool if a line could be drawn between each control null and it's original position so that you could always be sure that you could get the expression back to the character's neutral pose. That could probably be done with just one narrow patch for each control, I would think, with two CPs constrained to the origin and the other two constrained to the control null. 3) Control ID : It would be nice if the less obvious nulls had a patch constrained to them with an icon, or text, to identify what it is. I don't know how you would get the icon patches to always face the animator except through the camera though. Maybe 3D icons? Scratch that. Those are just nit-picking comments about something that is really too cool to criticize. The open range of motion is actually quite liberating.

Use more keyframes. If it has to rotate 360 degrees over 5 frames you will probably have to key every frame though I think that there is another way to do it by changing the rotation method to quaternian. Not sure though. You may have some success doing a search for "propellor". There was a thread some time ago that went into detail on setting up realistic spinning blades that can be controlled with an expression. Good luck.