coming soon
coming soon

 

This tutorial shows the theory of how to do a multilayered cloth sim using seperate ClothFX modifiers for each cloth object.
   
This tutuorial will cover how to quickly create clean meshes for cloth simulation using Shrink, Expand or Conform Wrap tools. This tutorial will also cover using Skin Wrap to use low poly drver cloth object to drive Higer poly "modeled" cloth.
   
This tutorial takes you through how to set up a chain simulation using cloth.

 

 

 

Creating Collision Objects for use in a Cloth sim

Thanks to John Chalfant for providing me with the model for this tutorial

 

 

The image below shows a high resolution arm that has detail modeled into it (i.e. Veins, muscles, wrinkles, etc). There are many small and large faces.

In order to get a sim to run cleanly (or at all) it is best to have all the faces be as square, and roughly the same size, as they can be. This tutorial will show you how to quickly create a clean mesh that has the optimal topology for doing cloth simulations.

I will follow up this tutorial with another that shows the process of creating cloth "Driver" objects for modeled cloth.

 

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The first thing you need to do is create a low poly cylinder around the mesh.

Make sure you delete the end faces.

 

 

 

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The cylinder should have the least amount or verts you need to shape it to roughly fit the mesh.

Add a turbosmooth modifier to up the resolution but do not collapse the stack since you want to work with the base object.

 

 

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You can use FFD's or simply edit the base object to quickly shape the collision mesh to the existing geometry.

You do not need to make it exact and you do not need to worry about interpenetrations.

Once you have shaped the mesh to fit your model then select the collision mesh and run the Conform_Wrap script (available from this site). You will be give the opportunity to select the objects you want to wrap to. This comes in handy when the character is made up of many parts.

The script will then conform the collision object to the model at the vertex level. The direction that each vertex moves is based on its' normal vector.

 

 

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This is how the collision object looks after the Conform_Wrap script has been run.

If there is any pinching simply select the verts that are pinching, add a relax modifier.

Now, with those verts selected, rerun the Conform_Wrap script. It will work at the subobject level as well.

The script will add a morph modifier and add the new shape to that modifier. If the modifier exists it will add it as a new target.

This allows you to "undo" the reshape by deleting the target or setting it to 0.

You can also easily work with different vertex selections and add new targets with each execution of the script.

 

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This final image shows how the collision mesh has faces that are all roughly the same size and as square as possible.

You can see by the bottom set of objects, that the mesh looks the same and can easily be used to run cloth simulations.

Depending on how you do your deformation you may be able to copy and paste your skin modifier to your new collision mesh then delete all the high poly geometry. Or you could just as easily add a skin wrap modifier and bind the collision object to the model.

I will be posting this as a video tutorial as soon as I have time. In the future I will go into great detail explaining how you can use this process to set up an entire character for cloth simming, as well as all the cloth drivers.