can't keep my cloths on

[Walter Baker]

ok Looking at two models from the lib. Gala and Lady Goodbody I noticed the Lady Goodbody has no 'simcloth' or materials

that make her dress work yet it does when you do an action so how is this done without deflectors or simcloth? or am I just missing it some where?

[Fuchur]

ok Looking at two models from the lib. Gala and Lady Goodbody I noticed the Lady Goodbody has no 'simcloth' or materials

that make her dress work yet it does when you do an action so how is this done without deflectors or simcloth? or am I just missing it some where?

 

There is no need for simcloth to manipulated geometry. For A:M there is no difference between "cloth" or the body at first.

You can define patches to being cloth in a simulation, but other than that it is just geometry like anything else too.

You can of course use (Fan-)Bones (with CP-weights), SmartSkins and CP-Animation to keep cloth (or any other geometry) where you want it while animating.

 

It highly depends on what you want to do:

- Throusers for instances shouldnt be simulated with SimCloth. (or at least it is hard to too).

- Skirts can be simulated with simcloth. If you set SimCloth in the right way up, it will produce very nice results, but it is hard to do that.

One thing you should however know: Lets say you are trying to animate a skirt. Not your whole skirt has to be manipulated by SimCloth. It will be enough if only one or two spline-rings at the end of the skirt will be simulated by simcloth and the other stuff will be manipulated by CPs, SmartSkins FanBones or anything else.

 

The thing is: For SimCloth you need a deflector. That means underlying geometry. For the other attempts you will often like to only model the skirts, etc and dont model the hips underneath. This will help you to rig the skirt without having to worry about intersections, etc.

 

So how should you begin?

I would recommend to try a few things out before you are going to do "the heavy stuff". Do a few SimCloth-simulations with simple stuff, Rig a few things with SmartSkins, Fanbones and or CP-Weights.

 

Starting with a complex character to understand what these things wont lead you to your aim. Before you do the heavy stuff, you have to practise a bit.

 

*Fuchur*

[Walter Baker]

Thanks Fuchur,

AM is such a great program and you can do great stuff with it but this cloth thing is a bit overwhelming. It is one of those thing I will have to study on a bit more and do a LOT of practice. Thanks for the help and advice.

[frosteternal]

SimCloth is not hard to use, it just takes a little practice, and what Fuchur said about experimenting a little first is helpful - but really, the best way to get the hang of it is to use it on a character. Cloth sliding down primitive shapes and tables are not the same as a real sim.

If you wish to understand simcloth (it is fascinating and powerful) pick a character from the cd (with moderately dense geometry) and add clothes to it. Shirt & pants. (Skirts are fine too.) For your settings, set the stretch values low, and the stiffness high, and adjust from there until you get the look you want.

SimCloth becomes more predictable the more you use it, and the setting will slowly start to make more sense as you tinker with them. Oh, and save often, just in case your sim takes too long and you want to force quit the program

Also, don't have all parts of the cloth self-collide. Around joint, like inside armpits, elbows, etc, you can group these, and in the group property setting there are "plugins:simcloth" options - turn off "self-collide" where you don't need it.

 

For my "Figure Drawing" project (which I work on in between school and work) I do have full-body cloth sims; all characters have fully simulated clothing. Our previous project, "The Mountain", had simulations on all shots of the main character's cloak. In the years this feature has been available, it has been improved tremendously, and is now very robust.

 

Good luck!

[Walter Baker]

Hi frosteternal, thanks for the advice and encouragement, while fighting the mobs at work today I was think about this and have a question. Should this cloth work be done in a chor.? Can it be done in an action or just what are the specifics of working with cloth?I have seen several times coments about choro. So it makes me wonder.

Wally

[frosteternal]

Hi frosteternal, thanks for the advice and encouragement, while fighting the mobs at work today I was think about this and have a question. Should this cloth work be done in a chor.? Can it be done in an action or just what are the specifics of working with cloth?I have seen several times coments about choro. So it makes me wonder.

Wally

Choreography is where to run sims, and then when you like them, I like to (rightclick on chor action) "export as action" and save the sim in a separate action file. (this has saved me time in a pinch before.)

The actual simcloth materials are applied in modeling windows, like any group material.