Softbody: A Small Improvement Could go a Long Way

Diomede

If you remember there was thread on softbody proof of concept with undersuits.  Most of the time, I just use Poser, and I think PhilW uses Marvelous Designer, and I guess we are all waiting for a possible extension of a Poser plugin to be a Carrara plugin.  But for some projects, even the imperfect undersuit would accomplish the job if the dang softbody editor could remember the named vertex groups.  But just in case someone identified this and I missed it, I will post the issue again.

 

OK, I created a custom G2F character and then a mesh undersuit with multiple panels that fits that custom character.  I went through and created named vertex groups for all of the panels and saved it to my object browser.  Now when I load the undersuit object and check it in the vertex modeler, I can select the vertex groups by name.  Hooray.  But then when I create a softbody attach modifier for the undersuit object and try to select the same vertex group by name, it will show up in the menu but the selection does not work.  I have to start all over. 

 

If the softbody editor select by vertex group function actually selected the vertex groups in its menu, there woul be a lot of situations in which I would save time by having a saved and prepped partial undersuit for a frequently used custom character.  For example, a shawl or a mink stole.

 

Has anyone gotten the softbody attach selection by vertex group editor to remember saved vertex groups when the object is retrieved from the browser?

Headwax

interesting question, sorry dont know the answer ;)

JoeMamma2000

My very fuzzy recollection was that I was saving each piece of armor as a separate object, not using vertex groups. But I could be very wrong since I've forgotten most of that exercise.

And in terms of small improvements that could go a long way...

What really frustrates me is that the Bullet code is a fully functional public domain code that works wonderfully in Lightwave and other apps. Collisions with moving objects works in Bullet, as well as a lot of other features of the Bullet code. And in fact the dAZ guys even had it working fine in Carrara not long ago in an earlier beta.

So I'm guessing that the effort required to make this particular (and critical) feature of Carrara cloth functional again is relatively minor. And would save us a lot of unnecessary work and frustration

So very close, but so very very far....

Diomede

Now that I see that the plugin thread just got updated, maybe it doesn't matter one way or the other. 

 

RE: panels as single or multiple objects.  I'm sure there is more than one way to do it, so whatever works.  I use a single object with multiple vertex groups so that I can simultaneously (a) turn of self collisions but (b) enable collisions with the clothing object.  That way, the panels can overlap and pass through each other.  On the other hand, a clear drawback is that the softbody selecter seems to forget the saved vertex groups even though the vertex modeler can select by them. 

 

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.  I'll just use Poser.