Skinning cloth

jfitch

Hey guys, this might be a noob question but I'm quite a bit of a noob in this area!
I'm curious as to how one might skin double sided cloth easily, or if this is just something to steer clear of.

Would you copy the weights from the front to the back? Would scripting be the easiest way to do that? I want to get better at rigging and skinning but there seems to be a lack of training in the best way to do things other than "be patient"

Let me know what you guys think!

Mr.Moose

If you copied the weights from the back to the front, wouldn't they be assigned to the wrong verts/bones ? Which would end up distorting the front and or back when the character moved and the cloth was pulled. You also might want stronger weights on the front/back depending on the way the character was done, since I know I can bend further forward than back etc? If that helps at all.

ETA: This is from my experience with blender's weight painting, I am not sure if it is similar to what you're using.

jfitch

I'm thinking they would be assigned to the same bones.

For instance, let's say its a leather cape with a bit of thickness. There's a joint chain for the cape itself to be used as simulated cloth. I think having the same weight would be ideal, but I'm not sure.

Mr.Moose

Even assigned to the same bones you're probably going to have the animations stretching the back and front differently, and will have to assign different weights within the limits. Also take the different topology of the back vs the front into account

I am not sure about the cape to be honest

CheeseOnToast

Which software are you using? In Maya, it's easy enough to weight a single-sided bit of cloth then duplicate the faces that you want to be double-sided. Flip the normals of the new faces then transform them slightly along their normal. Finally, delete non-deformer history.