Other people in the group had tried to use nCloth on the emperor too but it keeps slipping through him like it is just falling through the air:
I went a bit further with it and tried to constrain it but this time it would stay on the model but just pass through his skin like it wasn't there. I experimented with the different types of constraints to see which would create the best effect.
None of the constraints would keep the cloth from going through the skin so I looked at other methods to keep the cloth on the body. I decided that rather constrain it, I could make the emperor body a collision so that the robe would interact with the emperor and not fall through it.
This was making progress as at least it was not falling through the emperor completely. In previous projects I had to make an nCloth curtain so I knew about the different types of constraints. Now that the cloth is recognising that there is something in the way I just needed it to stay at the top. I added a constraint to some of the vertices at the back of the robe around the collar at the top and constrained it to the emperor body. This was the effect it gave me.
This was almost exactly what we were after and trying to achieve. To get to this stage it has taken me many hours to figure out and experiment and the next thing I needed to work out was to how to get the cloth to move when the body moves. I tried moving the arm but the cloth would not go with it. The cloth was still working but because the collision was not in the way, it fell to the emperor's side.
I've spent a long time trying to experiment with different constraints but none of the options will allow the cloth to move with the arm when repositioning the emperor. The closest I got was constraining the points of the cloth to the surface of the body but that still meant the cloth would not stay around the arm entirely, it would just stay near the arm which is no good.
After experimenting some more, I discovered that the nCloth would move with the arm but only if the arm's starting position was in the same position that the nCloth was created. If you moved the arm during the animation then it would move with the arm but if you position the arm first then the nCloth does not follow it.
This does make it slightly difficult because it means that the first pose has to always be the same for the nCloth to follow. We do not necessarily have to show the model moving into the first key position because that can be cut out later on but it would still have to be rendered for the simulation to work and the nCloth to follow properly.
As a group we still have a lot of work to do and trying to work out the nCloth has taken up much of it. Another consideration is the render times. Using nCloth will increase the render time of each shot massively. James came up with another method which was to use the wrap deformer to get the sleeves to follow the model. It works and does not effect the render times like nCoth does but it does have some problems. The main problem with it is that when the wrist rotates or bends, the sleeve rotates and bends with it, it does not stay pointing down like gravity would effect the sleeve.
It is not ideal but using the wrap deformer may be the only way we can animate the emperor's robe without wasting render time. If possible we will use the nCloth as it will react to the wind and behave as desired.
No comments:
Post a Comment