Could a plugin be created to speed up the creation of morph targets?

Hermit Crab

Hi everyone,

Earlier in the year I tried in vain to animate physics clothing. At the very end of my attempts I tried exporting some of the cloth simulations as OBJ files which I used to make morphs targets. The morphs in the clothing corresponded with keyframes of the figure's movement.

Before I waffle on further, my question is: could a plugin be created to speed up the process?

Now I'll waffle on as clearly as I can! The gif attached is for reference.

Suppose a figure moves as shown in the gif. If one overall physics simulation of draping cloth was carried out while those movements were being made, the leg would pass through the clothing several times.

But if a SEPARATE simulation for EACH MAIN keyframe is carried out, the cloth will drape effectively over the limbs at each of those points. Each keyframe needs to be a 'stand alone' pose - the limbs can't be moving either into or out of the pose while the simulation takes place.

If that is done (as I did to make the gif) then animated physics clothing can be achieved to a small degree.

The process involves:

1 animate the figure along the timeline;

2 Save the project and then work on a copy.

Using the copied project

3 Simulate physics draping over the pose at keyframe 1

4 Export the cloth as an object (to be used as a morph target)

5 Delete keyframe 1 and do another simulation at keyframe 2

Repeat until you have a number of 'posed' cloth objects to build into one item with a morph target for each keyframe.

Lastly, open the original project and add the clothing with its morphs to the figure. As you move along the timeline just slide each morph on and off, one by one. That's how the attached gif was done.

The ideal plugin would:

1 make an object export of the cloth at any chosen point in the simulation;

2 add that exported object as a morph target.

Hermit Crab

Hello again,

At the risk of sounding mad, I need to say that, overall, I'm still pessimistic about any animating of clothes with physics in Carrara.

The process above takes no account of the movement of cloth while a figure jumps or twirls and so on. Any results from the suggested plugin would be limited to walking and other gentle movements.

But since I went through the process of trying it out, I thought I'd share it in case anyone was interested.

The process is definitely too tedious to bother with without some way of speeding it up - hence the question about a plugin.