3Ds Max - Animating clothes on a character?

Danzigo · Jan 2014

Hi guys,

An example I have is a skirt on a character and when the character walks, the skirt moves with the geometry.

Is this process done with garment maker and the cloth modifier? Are there any decent tutorials around?

I'm registered with Digital Tutors this month and can't find anything on there for this. If there are videos related to this on there please let me know.

Thanks

Timidy · Jan 2014

Yea you won't find any good cloth tuts on DT. I recommend Cloth Techniques and Advanced Cloth Workshop from Turbosquid.

They're for subscription but this guy on Youtube has uploaded some/most of it here's the first tutorial
[ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9rMFCh74jk"]Turbosquid Cloth Tutorial[/ame]

If you're doing it for games I think you can just bake the animation upon mesh export, and use it as a pre-defined animation within the game engine.

If you want dynamic cloth animation however I think most people would tell you to learn UDK's cloth dynamics for instance, since it's the most popular engine. 3DMotive has a greate tutorial on using cloth in UDK - 3D Motive - Cloth in UDK.

Unfortunately I don't think cloth dynamics have been introduced yet in Unity.

You can also just rig the cloth with bones and then animate them that way (how it's done in some fighting games such as Soul Calibur I believe), or apply physics to the bones, or get creative like that.

Mark Dygert · Jan 2014

So the first question is:
What are your limits?
There are a lot of ways to handle cloth. If you're just rendering there are a lot of options available, both inside of max and with external plug-ins. If you're working within a game engine then the options get limited quite a bit, by what the engine can handle but there are a few tricks to get various things to work, but it all depends.

The next question would be:
What version of 3dsmax are you using?

In 3dsmax2013 they added MCloth which works with MassFX.
Here is a guy making and trashing a pirate flag using mCloth:http://vimeo.com/42891161
It's much easier to work with and quite a bit more robust than the old cloth and garment maker modifiers. The old Garment maker modifier was a horrible workflow unless you are working off of specific patterns like clothing designer would use. Even then it was a bit of a nightmare.

It is still helpful but only because of the way it tessellates spline shapes (like the guy in that video talks about in the first min). It tessellates in a way that simulates better than quaded meshes, but that's really not necessary and makes it really hard to make complex shapes so for the most part almost everyone uses quads.

The old cloth modifier isn't bad and can still be used, but mCloth does work with MassFX where the old cloth modifier doesn't. mCloth also simulates a bit quicker and is a bit more interactive in the viewport. The old cloth modifier has "live" mode so you can interact with it a bit like mCloth but it was pretty lagtastic, mCloth isn't.

Still, if you don't have 3dsmax2013 or higher the old cloth modifier can still get the job done pretty well.

The next question would be:
What do you plan on doing with the cloth?
What will it be interacting with? (characters, environments? A cape or a flag, a hoop skirt, ball gown/wedding dress or a mini-dress?)
What forces will be applied? (Wind, solid object collision, tied to something ect...)
Does it need to collide with other cloth objects?
Does it need to rip apart or have a strength parameter to it, or will it always remain intact?

The last question would be:
What is the design of the cloth?
Is there a specific shape it needs to hold, like a pleated skirt or pants?
For something like pleats you might want to simulate on a flat cloth surface and skinwrap or constrain your pleated cloth to the surface that way the simulation isn't fighting with the pleats. The cloth "driver" is a throw away object that gets ignored during rendering or export.

Is The cloth made of various materials? Silk stitched to canvas, stitched to long flowy lace with buttons pinning it to leather? Or is it all one material and relatively free to simulate how it needs to? Like a long dress that just hangs from the waist.

Danzigo · Jan 2014

Thanks very much for the in depth replies

I'm not doing this for a game. It's purely just an animation.

The cloth is just going to be clothes such as shorts and a skirt.

Here is an example of exactly what I want:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7qZ4kAZnEw

I am using 3Ds Max 2014.

The animation is indoors so no forces are used really and the cloths might need to collide together at some point.

For jackets, t-shirts etc... would you suggest just modelling them on top of my character, then attaching them and then rig and skin it? Or use cloth again?

Thanks very much

acitone · Jan 2014

I think you can rig and skin with bones and use cloth for "secondary" animation. No?

arrow1234 · May 2014

Mark Dygert wrote: »

So the first question is:
What are your limits?
There are a lot of ways to handle cloth. If you're just rendering there are a lot of options available, both inside of max and with external plug-ins. If you're working within a game engine then the options get limited quite a bit, by what the engine can handle but there are a few tricks to get various things to work, but it all depends.

The next question would be:
What version of 3dsmax are you using?

In 3dsmax2013 they added MCloth which works with MassFX.
Here is a guy making and trashing a pirate flag using mCloth:http://vimeo.com/42891161
It's much easier to work with and quite a bit more robust than the old cloth and garment maker modifiers. The old Garment maker modifier was a horrible workflow unless you are working off of specific patterns like clothing designer would use. Even then it was a bit of a nightmare.

It is still helpful but only because of the way it tessellates spline shapes (like the guy in that video talks about in the first min). It tessellates in a way that simulates better than quaded meshes, but that's really not necessary and makes it really hard to make complex shapes so for the most part almost everyone uses quads.

The old cloth modifier isn't bad and can still be used, but mCloth does work with MassFX where the old cloth modifier doesn't. mCloth also simulates a bit quicker and is a bit more interactive in the viewport. The old cloth modifier has "live" mode so you can interact with it a bit like mCloth but it was pretty lagtastic, mCloth isn't.

Still, if you don't have 3dsmax2013 or higher the old cloth modifier can still get the job done pretty well.

The next question would be:
What do you plan on doing with the cloth?
What will it be interacting with? (characters, environments? A cape or a flag, a hoop skirt, ball gown/wedding dress or a mini-dress?)
What forces will be applied? (Wind, solid object collision, tied to something ect...)
Does it need to collide with other cloth objects?
Does it need to rip apart or have a strength parameter to it, or will it always remain intact?

The last question would be:
What is the design of the cloth?
Is there a specific shape it needs to hold, like a pleated skirt or pants?
For something like pleats you might want to simulate on a flat cloth surface and skinwrap or constrain your pleated cloth to the surface that way the simulation isn't fighting with the pleats. The cloth "driver" is a throw away object that gets ignored during rendering or export.

Is The cloth made of various materials? Silk stitched to canvas, stitched to long flowy lace with buttons pinning it to leather? Or is it all one material and relatively free to simulate how it needs to? Like a long dress that just hangs from the waist.

Thank you for your reply. I searched for the entire internet and they all mentioned the old cloth plugin, and you are the only one talk about the mCloth. I guess I have my road lit up now.
Also, I come across to the nVidia web site and they made this new physX/APEX clothing simulation, it worth a look too.

3Ds Max - Animating clothes on a character?

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