Is this possible for cloth simulation?

melviso

Is this possible in 3d simulation, where u can get certain parts of a cloth to maintain its shape while being simulated like this:



This can be done with rigid bodies but it would be easier and faster with cloth especially if you have a lot of hair poly strips or hair strips tied with a ribbon or something attached so if we can paint weights for cloth maintaining their shape when simulated would be great. Think of clothes with a lot of frills and gathers at the rims, curved or curly hair, braids and so on.
Is this possible in any 3d simulation app? Even Nvidia cloth does not have this.

Obscura

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/APEX_Cloth_(3ds_max)_-_Video
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Physics/Apex/

I think you can attach animated skeletal meshes with simulating rigid bodies, and cloth to that but I never actually tried so I'm not really sure how would this go. But other than the links I've put here, probably there are many resources about Apex cloth with Unreal, onthe internet.

melviso

Helpful links there, Obscura.
Right now cloth is simulated with stiffness on certain areas  and other areas dangling when stiffness is zero. Like the red circled area tend to lose their shape or collapse if stiffness is zero and only retain their shape fully if pinned. In the real world, hair or frills tend to be stiff at the ends and still bend with gravity. I am wondering why cloth can't simulate like that.

If this is possible, no need for rigid bodies, just paint pinned vertex areas, simulated areas(unpinned) and maintain vertex shape in unpinned areas. There should be a way to get certain parts that hold their shape and bend say curly hair. I gather this would mean infinite edge spring strength and bending. 

Obscura

I'm wondering if you really need to simulate this inside Unreal... I mean you could make the simulation outside and then bake Alembic or even better, if its not animated inside Unreal, Just bake the resulting geometry inside your simulation software, make an fbx , bumm, you got your mesh... If you want like slight waving, shaking in wing - that is not really the case here as I understand - Make the Simulated mesh outside. I'd say this engine or working environment did not really made for this kind of internal operations. So you can have some sorts of physical simulations but you can get much better results with something that is specifically designed for this. Do your simulation in something that makes you the simulation without compromises, and then try to think about how to get any of the results of that inro Unreal... Thats for complex physics /vfx Thiugh you can do some things but it has some very clear limitations plus up to your math and programming skills...

I still assume if I don't misunderstand your example and meshes, you want one continuous body with different kind of physics behaviours. I'd say on this level this is probably not possible inside Unreal, without sme external data.

At the end of the day we could come to the point where you can just ask how do I model it - If you don't want animation in your scene, with this.

melviso

I was actually wondering why this isn't possible in 3d applications, not unreal. sorry. There should be a way to paint maintain shape while being simulated. So far this is only possible with rigid bodies.