Cloth in 3DS MAX

Divide By Zer0

does anyone have a good tutorial on how to use cloth WELL in 3DS max 9 or lower. All of my experiments in cloth are either too computer intensive or just plain don't work properly.

Also, any links to some really good cloth plug-ins that you guys know work well would be helpful.

Thanks ahead of time

aesir

There are some decent cloth plugins but they cost a lot.

My experience with cloth is this: if you dont have a dedicated coder to help you out, dont bother.

MoP

aesir: it depends if you're doing cloth for games, or just cloth for rendering / showing off / generating from Max.

Divide By Zer0: Try just looking in the Max help for "cloth". I've had good results by using the "Cloth" modifier... it is quite slow for complex solutions but I don't think you're gonna be able to get any better without expensive high-end plugins.

Divide By Zer0

I've followed the max tuts for cloth, but whenever I try to apply the same basic principles to another model with clothing it just doesn't work. I have reactor cloth but that in itself is quite buggy from what I've experienced.

I'm just trying to figure it out because I'm going to be doing an high-end animation that involves cloth and was hoping there was an easier way.

Rob Galanakis

If you want to get good, fast, usable, cloth, you'll need a real cloth plugin. nCloth and Syflex are fantastic solutions but they are not for max and I'm not familiar with any other cloth plugins. Default-solutions are generally not at an acceptable standard anymore.

Anyway CGTalk would probably have more information if you poke around, or check out turbosquid's plugins.

Eric Chadwick

Check out Paul Hormis' site.
Tutorials
http://www.hyperent.com/Hyp-Tutorial-Cloth-Main.php
and
Forum
http://hyperent.com/bboard/forumdisplay.php?s=3af3ae74440721e9a4b2abc7a6454c5c&f=4

Mark Dygert

Standard Max cloth is fine, I use it quite a bit for animation. I think the important thing is to make a lower poly control cage that pushes the cloth around not your high poly mesh. The link to Paul Hormis site has a plug-in and a great tutorial on doing just that. The poly count on the cloth itself will have to be pretty dense to get a good simulation going and won't really impact the speed of the simulation that much, but the cloth control cage should be very low poly, just enough to drive the cloth in the right places. Same goes for particles, invisible control cages are how you make fast simulations.

As for the expensive plug-ins they are nice, not worth the money, and you'll need to know what you're doing before you start using them. There really isn't a "cloth for Dummies" style plug-in yet and I'm not sure there will be. After you get used to cloth you'll find you really don't need those plug-ins. It's funny how many people rush to find an add-on often spending good money on them when if they cracked a few help files they would find almost the same thing is already in max.

Divide By Zer0

Thanks for all the help guys, I'm gonna play around with the low poly cages and see if I can get something to work well. I might end up trying out maya's nCloth functin and seeing if it works better for me.

thanks again

Archanex

I'd agree with Eric Chadwick, Paul Hormis is a pimp

Mark Dygert

And by pimp Archanex means someone who'll pop you in the money maker if you don't give him cash.

By this I mean in order to understand his workflow and use his scripts to their fullest you'll need to order his DVD(s). While it seems kind of a dirty tactic, it's actually really good. The few free tutorials he has up on his site don't even hint at the iceberg of awesomeness this guy has to offer.