cloth simulation

arrangemonk

i ssomebody into simulating cloth for trousers or something instead of sculpting it out in zbrush or mudbox?

i wanted to know it a simulated cloth looks as good as a good sculpt..

edit: darn, i thought i was into the technical talk board... srry

Joseph Silverman

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but why not just sculpt it? In the time it takes you to fiddle with simulation controls, you could study and practice enough to competently sculpt cloth, which will give you an awful lot more versatility and control of the final result.

John Warner

In my experience, sculpting cloth has been kinda the only solution. it takes a bit of work to get good at it, but once you start getting your head around it it goes quickly.

the thing about doing normal-mapped cloth (if you're asking about low poly stuff) is that you want something that's going to look pretty good in a number of poses... and that sorta takes manual design.

arrangemonk

are there any tutorials for sculpting cloth?
i tried it and respone on it was that it doesnt look natural
i would appreciate some help with it *G*

adamlewis

I would also recommend just sculpting it. There's no trick to it, like most sculpting it's just about having an eye for form and volume.

To help build your proficiency you could practice like a traditional artist would: take a piece of cloth and drape it over an object like a box to use as a reference. Then just model a basic scene of it in 3D and use that as your base to sculpt from. With a simple setup like that you could sculpt literally thousands of different variations simply by reorienting the cloth or using a heavier fabric etc.

PolyHertz

Their's also this (picked a copy up myself the other day):

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Wrinkles-Drapery-Solutions-Practical/dp/0823015874

Rhinokey

justin just mentioned the guy on that book is doing a pretty sweet swastika impersonation. never liked hoggarths work.

arrangemonk

lol, who cares about a paintet man that looks like a swastika?
the main thing is that the cloth is right^^

Joseph Silverman

[ QUOTE ]
never liked hoggarths work.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me either, but it's hard to deny the value of his books. I've got the one on hands, and it's awesome and helped me a lot -- i'm sure the swastikloth book is great too.

East

For some reason reading Hogarth's material always makes me feel uneasy and depressed. I think he's got a way of drawing that just icks me out. Valuable or not, I'm never going anywhere near his work again

Archanex

I used cloth sims for this guy on my site, but I think if I were to do it again, I'd only use it for a very limited number of things, and suspenders is definantly NOT one of them. Basically with cloth sims, you're going to have to baby it at every step of the way,You're going to have a lot more control, and a lot fewer headaches if you sculpt the model the cloth

I should also note that, the seams in this characters clothing are NOT a result of the cloth sim

anyway, hyperent.com has some good info on cloth sims in max if you're interested

arrangemonk

i tried out zbrush3 for cloth, and i liked it, i mean this is quick and dirty, but it looks defenetly better than the last time
cloth simulation took 4 hours and looked silly^^ so i think ill keep on learing to sculpt^^

Neox

good decision
you could also take the book from Gottfried Bammes about cloth and wrinkles, but in the mean time, theres nothing better then studies from real cloth, or you could study the old masters, photographs etc. there are so much ways to learn how to sculpt cloth, don't stay with only one book

Mark Dygert

I totally agree with everyone that sculpting cloth is the way to go in this case. mostly because it sounds like you wanted a shortcut for something that should be learned.

Sculpting cloth is a good way to get a pretty good cloth sim started. When you start out with wrinkles and folds it helps bring the cloth to life. Sometimes people have trouble sculpting gravity into their wrinkles so running a short sim on your wrinkles might be a useful tool to relax and hang your pants? But really it will only cause more work for you because you'll need to come up with a collision leg mesh to sit under the pants cloth so it just won't hang like curtains from the belt. Setting up the cloth sim is pretty easy however setting up the different groups of verts could be time consuming since you have several parts that would be constrained/strapped to the legs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, cloth only, isn't a good solution. Sculpting is a great way to learn and it can make for a great cloth sim so learning to sculpt cloth is going to be pretty important even if you start using cloth in the future.

TheSplash

Some games like Uncharted and Crysis use multiple normal maps for animating wrinkles and skin folds in characters faces ect, I wonder if a similar technique could be used for wrinkles in clothing and if it would even be practical. Although people don't really pay much attention to tight cloth moving realistically I guess it would still be a cool thing to see.

Neox

I think this is done in current sportsgames, ok i didn't play the actual fifa and pes titles but looking on some screens it apears, that they have normals for specific poses.