Monday, April 11, 2011

40 Must See Cloth Sim Tips

http://www.3dworldmag.com/2009/10/20/40_must_see_clothing_simulation_tips/

This article has been around for a little while, but in case you haven't seen it, there it is.  40 tips for how to improve your cloth workflow.  I especially like tip #32 by Malcolm Thomas-Gustave.

32 Mix multiple set-ups

Sometimes, a character’s animation will definitely not result in the cloth movements you need. For a shot in which a dancing character’s scarf was supposed to wrap around her neck, I created four separate set-ups. The first was the loose scarf flapping around while she danced. The second was the scarf in its final pose, wrapped around her neck from frame one, also flapping away. For the third, I scrubbed the animation of the loose scarf until I reached the point where I wanted it to start wrapping around the character’s neck. Here, I created a duplicate, adding bones along the long loose part of the scarf, then skinned the scarf to the bones. Over the next few frames, I keyed a few poses of the scarf with the bones wrapping around the neck. The fourth was just a Blend Shape of all three previous set-ups. By simply keying the Blend Shape to morph from one to the next as the animation dictated meant I did not have to deal with a single overly complex set-up.

And since we're talking about him, you must check out his demo reel.  It's one of, if not THE most impressive Character FX/TD reels I've seen.


His site is http://ikfk.com

I feel like I should be talking about hair and fur more on this blog.  Oh well.

~Melissa

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