OptiTex Dynamic Cloth, morph to shape prior to draping

erik leeman

Hi all,
Just found out it is possible to morph the OptiTex Dynamic scarf into a U-shape before draping it over Vic6's shoulders.
In principle this method would enormously simplify usage of unrigged dynamic cloth items, but I guess it'll first have to be refined for more complicated shapes.

What I did was as follows:
step one - gravity-drape the scarf over a simple cylinder to bend it into a U-shape, but don't freeze the drape!
step two - export the draped scarf geometry as for a normal morph (in my case via GoZ to ZBrush).
step three - import the unmodified U-shaped scarf geometry as a morph for the still dynamic OptiTex scarf.
step four - clear the scarf drape over the cylinder, making it flat, apply the morph to it, and then position the now again U-shaped scarf around your posed figure's neck.
step five - set the scarf to collide with the figure in stead of the cylinder, and start the drape, but then immediately pause it.
step six - disable the morph by returning its value to zero.
step seven - continue and finish the drape of the still U-shaped scarf over your figure's shoulders.

Don't be alarmed by a sudden change in shape after step five, step six removes it so the scarf will look U-shaped as it did before starting the drape.

Again, I have just tried this method for the very first time, and I don't know yet how to make the most effective use of it, but even so I thought it was promising enough to share this with other OptiTex users.

Cheers!

Erik

erik leeman

As I was looking for a way to save my new scarf-morph for later use I found something I simply never ever tried to do before: you can save an already draped (but still dynamic) garment as a Figure/Prop asset, including the morphs I described before.
If you then import it into a scene, and position it over a figure it can still be morphed and/or draped further, never did I expect this to be possible!
Not sure how useful this could be, but still interesting : )

Cheers!

Erik

Szark

Thanks erik for sharing all that. I found it interesting that it could be done. Very cool. Now to remember this if I ever need to do it.

Havos

An alternative way of doing this, at least for the scarf example, would be to do a slightly more complicated animated drape. So imagine that the scarf starts above the figures head, and collides against the cylinder. Later the cylinder starts to drop, passing through the figures head and beyond. As long as the cloth is set to collide against both the figure and the cylinder then the first few frames will give it the desired bend using the cylinder, and the later frames will make it drape as desired over the characters shoulders. For this to work the figure would also need to move during the drape, starting at roughly 45% (z rotate) and then swinging to upright after the scarf has hit the neck.

Actually by moving the figure as I suggested above, you might not need the cylinder at all to get the desired drape.

erik leeman

I did this one a couple of years ago, but it was a nightmare to drape and I have no intention to ever do it like that again!
So I'm looking for better ways to do this sort of stuff, and being able to store pre-shaped non-rigged items could be very helpful I think.
This way you'll only have to do the difficult part once, and re-use it as often as you like.
With any luck it won't even be that difficult because chances are you could do the bending etc. in an external modeler as well.

Cheers!

Erik

Melissa Conway

Thank you, Erik, for posting this. I have been looking for a way to drape the dynamic scarf over my character's shoulders like a shawl for some time now.

M.

erik leeman

Yesss, got it : )

Here's a method that works: use a posable rope (like ' Climb - Superrope' by 3-D-C on Rendo) to help shape your scarf.

First set up a 30-frame animation of the rope, starting from a stretched horizontal pose, ending in a tight enough horizontal curled up shape.

Then, in frame one, drop the scarf in a static single-frame drape over the rope so it folds double over it, hanging like a curtain on a rod.

Subsequently run an animated drape with the rope curling up, taking the scarf with it as it goes (maximize friction so it doesn't slide off)).
If all goes well you'll end up with a folded-double, curled-up scarf hanging from a coiled rod.

Delete the rope/rod, and export the shaped scarf so you can turn it into a morph.
When you import that morph for the scarf, take care to set 'Reverse Deformations' to NO.

Then save the scarf with the morph as a Support Asset - Figure/Prop Asset, so you can re-use it.

Cheers!

Erik

erik leeman

Here's a very quick and very dirty first result : )
The scarf in this image still has lots of self-intersections that need sorting out, but the draping is quite acceptable.
(The rest of the clothing obviously wasn't dynamic cloth, it's just an example).
I can now drape that same scarf around any number of figures without having to go through the arduous process of folding it lengthwise and coiling up it ever again.

Cheers!

Erik

WendyLuvsCatz

Oh wow morphing dynamic cloth never occured to me, this opens up so many possibilities

TransformerMan

Fantastic trick! Thank you for posting this!

I've made a few tests, and it seems to work for almost everything. The one exception I've found is clothing with more than one "style" (where you can select more than one style for the clothing - setting at bottom of the Dynamic Clothing garment tab). Attempting to add a morph to such a piece of cloting generates the "Geometry did not match, failed to create morph" error.

Anyone got an idea if there is a way around this?

nicstt

This seems to work well on other items; tried it on the Flared Dress from Optex: http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/FreebieDownload01.php

It was just a rough and ready morph.

If anyone wants the morph for the dress I can upload it to my deviant art page; I presume it only works with that specific dress; (the shader on the dress, btw, is DA IRAY shader presets - I'm liking em so far.).

Thanks to Erik for this tip.