rope on a biped?
howdy gang!
I have a character in 3DS Max, that has long ties on a mask and belt sash. The character is rigged with a biped, and the mask ties are rigged with the ponytail bones on the biped, while the belt ties are rigged with custom bones attached to the pelvis of the biped.
I would like to figure out a method to sim physics on the ties for gravity and wind and self collision, ideally for a realtime engine. Any help in the process would be greatly appreciated!
I have a character in 3DS Max, that has long ties on a mask and belt sash. The character is rigged with a biped, and the mask ties are rigged with the ponytail bones on the biped, while the belt ties are rigged with custom bones attached to the pelvis of the biped.
I would like to figure out a method to sim physics on the ties for gravity and wind and self collision, ideally for a realtime engine. Any help in the process would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
http://www.3d-frankiev.com/maxtuts/max8_video_tutorials.htm
Alex
Since cloth doesn't use bones you can get rid of them and just run cloth sims while your character animates. Since you have a few pieces of cloth you might want to copy your collision mesh and set it to be non visible so each piece of cloth has its own collision mesh. Don't worry about having to skin the new copies just apply skinwrap and point it to your original mesh, it will follow it pretty much perfectly. Adding new cloth modifiers on one collision mesh is a disaster waiting to happen so avoid it with individual collision meshes for each piece.
For cloth to follow your mesh around, first skin the entire cloth object to one bone, apply cloth and under groups select a few verts near the bone, and create a group, turn on soft selection and click "perserve". This tells the cloth sim to preserve any movement that might be coming from lower in the history stack in this case its the skin info that will be preserved.
To get the wind effects you want use Wind Space Warp forces to effect the cloth. In the cloth sim properties you can pick forces, just select the wind forces you create. I like to set one wind force to follow the character and blow slightly on the cloth at times to help the cloth keep its correct shape, think of it as that mysterious wind in supermans cape when hes inside.
Now if you MUST use bones thats a bit trickier but I'm pretty sure it can be done with cloth also, using cloth to drive your bones. The results won't be as fluid. I'd have to test it out, but you could try this out.
Basically you're using cloth to drive bones using a few non renderable helpers.
Copy your modeled cloth and call it CLOTH SIM set it to be non renderable. Leave your original cloth renderable and leave it Skinned to the bones. Draw out a spline that has verts at each bone joint, easily done by turning on 3D snaps. Apply skinwrap to the spline and have it follow the cloth, then apply a Spline IK Control modifier to the spline to create dummies at each joint. Apply an Spline IK solver to the bones so it will follow the spline, run your cloth sim and set some keys for the bones.
There might be half a dozen different ways to do this but its the simplest way I can think of to get bones to act like cloth. It won't be real time but then cloth hardly is without custom physics for that particular engine.
EDIT: or follow sages link to an actual fleshed out example haha
EDIT EDIT: jezzus h crisco he rambles on for almost an hour, its like having to read one of my own posts... There is actually 5min of useful info. I'm sorry frankiev but you need to edit that stuff down or write it up so there is less nervous rambling. I zoned out a few times and had to listen to a few chunks again and a lil blood dribbled out of my ear.
It's a pretty nice method, and almost like what I outlined above. I applaud anyone who doesn't zone out while he rambles, but its worth it.
Now if you MUST use bones thats a bit trickier but I'm pretty sure it can be done with cloth also, using cloth to drive your bones. The results won't be as fluid. I'd have to test it out, but you could try this out.
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This works, but there is always cleanup involved in the real world to make the animations loop (walk cycle) and blend.