in-game cloth animation

j03

Hi all.. I've recently starting playing with the Cloth modifier in Max6 and was curious.. Are modifiers like this used for game animations? For example the dress animations in BloodRyne2 character have some good flowing cloth effect.

I've tried messing with it a bit, but I don't see how its possible to create a fluid loop with the cloth modifier.

Anyone with some insight into how this is done?

MoP

I think it's usually done as a real-time physics solution (similar to what you're generating in Max6, but probably more crude, so it doesn't eat too many resources).
Max Payne 2 had real-time in-game cloth, I think - you could run through curtains and they'd billow around you.
Generally you just model the cloth in a "neutral" flat position, then use a proprietary or licensed physics engine to calculate it's drapery in the game.

MoP

Snowfly

It's an effect you're not likely to see if you're exporting to an engine that doesn't have cloth dynamics built in. So the cloth modifier in max should do well enough if you're doing portfolio renders and the like.

A fun thing I've been playing around with in Maya is creating rag dolls and hooking up my character's IK to it to 'catch' the motion. It exports fine to the Unreal engine, but I can't edit the curves or create a loop. Maybe when Scott Ruggels posts his script, I'll be able to... (hint hint)

Daz

To be honest most cloth in games these days is still simply done with bone animation, but there are some realtime procedural solutions as MoP describes. Another way to go is to use a cloth sim to generate a bunch of morph targets, and use those in game as opposed to skeletal animation.

FatAssasin

There are maxScripts that will generate secondary motion on bones as keyframes so that you can output it to a game engine. The good thing about the scripts is that you can always go back and tweak the bones' animation to achieve a loop.

monster

We spent a lot of time getting Bloodrayne's dress simulate well. The Dress model has about 130 exported bones and about half of them are simulated realtime.

If you want a loopable cloth simulation you'll need to use bones with reactor or a script as Fat said.

Or you could just animate it.

usagi

remember gannon's cape in ocarina of time? man that was so sweet back in '99