help with cloth sim

Riptyde

Hey all, I am trying to find a way to generate the effect of a sheet of cloth gently swaying in a breeze. The sheet would be fully open as hanging down from one edge. My thinking would be to first make a high poly cloth with a cloth stimulation added to achieve the look of it hanging. Then apply that, make a low poly with normal maps. For the gentle movement, I am thinking of animating using a simple armature. This way I can make it loop continually.

Does this sound like a good approach? Any better ideas?

Thanks

Riptyde

Riptyde

ProjectEagleeye wrote: »

You could also take a look at APEX for UDK http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/APEXOverview.html

Thanks for the link.

I do apologize, I should have mentioned I am working with unity.

Riptyde

i never though of using a dynamic cloth.... actually i didn't even know Unity had the capability (yup, I'm new to all of this yet). I'll have to check it out. The cloth in the video seemed to run slow and appears resource intense and I will be having up to 60 sheets of cloth that I want to do this with. So I'm not sure that will be the best way to go.

Another though I had was to have a static mesh and use animated normal maps. Since what I am trying to achieve is just a subtle effect it might work.

Thanks again

konstruct

I think something you should thing about, is if you need for the cloth to be dynamic or not. Does it need to react to things in the world? If so, dynamic cloth is expensive, and in most cases is tough to get looking right. (I remember hearing somewhere that Batmans cape from arkahm asylum was the result of one dude, and that being his entire job).

If it doesnt need to react to anything, I highly recommend researching if unity can do any kind of Animated Vertex shader. The idea is the shader contains information that physically moves the vertices. The movement is usually determined using some kind of mathematical function, like a sine wave (great for wind), which then moves the vertcies in the world. Further control over this movement can usually be clamped using Vertex Alpha information. Black- generally meaning no animated vertex information, and white meaning full animated vertex information.

Both Cryengine, and Unreal have this ability. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to find out if someone had developed something like this for unity by now.

Riptyde

@ konstruct - Thanks for the idea. Vertex shading is something else I am figuring out (again...new to game art). I will start looking now.