Softbody attach - revisiting some ideas

Diomede

Thought I'd revisit some softbody attach experiments.  My current thought is 3-fold.

1) still use the single "undersuit" concept

2) still turn off collision for the posing character figure so that the cloth softbody only collides with the undersuit

3) make a "ghost" figure out of parented props with keyframed movement and attach the softbody undersuit to that, not the posing character figure.  Also turn off collision for the ghost, but not the undersuit attached to it.

 

The idea is that with clever movement of hot points, it might be easier to align the softbody elements with the posed figure than if the undersuit was attached to the figure's bones.  Not sure if other people had this problem, but one of my recurring problems had been that attaching a group of vertexes to the rigged bone rotated the softbody panel centered around the wrong point.  I think using the ghost figure might help because then the hot points can be adjusted.

- these screenshots are just of my test ghost figure and the undersuit, not the actual character to be clothed.  Will use the thread to show progress as I experiment along these lines.  

Diomede

And then the other issue I think this might address is that the ghost figure has vertex spheres for joints and the limbs are vertex cylinders (both can be shaped more, of course).  The soft body attach in the second pic (white mesh) is the undersuit.  Note that it also has partial spheres for the joints.  As a result, I think better performance will occur at the shoulders, knees, etc.  You can see an illustration of the shoulder problem when attaching the undersuit directly to the figure bone tree here.   http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/767546/#Comment_767546. 

 

In contrast, if you look at the ghost figure above, the limb can be bent in any direction.

 

Just experimenting, but I think the ghost figure made of balls and cylinders and posed with hot points rather than boned rigging has some promise if it can be made to match the movement of whatever figure is being clothed. 

Headwax

thanks diomede, looking forward to this