I’m not sure whether this question should go in the plugins or maxscript forum, but here it goes.
I recently found the Simcloth 3 plugin and found it to work really nicely, but I found a problem with it.
I had a character that I had animated. The rig was very memory heavy, so once I finaled my animation I saved it out as a point cache (I love point cache lol).
I then went to apply a Simcloth simulation for some cloth on the character.
The simulation worked great, except that the cloth would not follow the cached animation. I created a group that would attach the correct verts to the geometry, and that worked fine. The cloth held the shape of the attached geometry perfectly, it just wouldn’t follow the motion.
This led me to do some experiments with simple geometry, where I created a simple test rig using skin and skinwrap. I found that in both situations Simcloth would attach to the geometry but not follow the animation. Yet, when I manually animated the geometry’s position and rotation, the cloth would follow. When I compared the two, I realized that point based animation did not affect the pivot/transform point at all, while manual transforms did.
This led me to the conclusion that Simcloth will only follow an objects pivot point/transform motion, and that Simcloth will not follow direct point based animation.
In order to finish my project, I ended up manually animating proxy geometry (basically spheres to represent the body) by key framing their transforms manually. It worked, but it was tedious.
I was wondering if there is a way to modify Simcloth to react to point based animation correctly, without too extensive of a rewrite of the code? Or perhaps more simply, is it possible to have the pivot point of a mesh follow its point based deformations?
I am not asking anyone to do this for me, but I don’t really even know where to start.
I have programming experience, but I have no experience with max coding or it’s sdk.
Thank you in advance for your help,
Ray
Is there any reason you can’t use the cloth that comes with max? It does exactly what you’re asking.
Simcloth was just simpler and quicker.
I tried to set up a max cloth simulation before, but I could never get the results I wanted with it, and the simulation was really slow. Simcloth had less options to mess with, and the simulation times were a lot faster for me.
A big problem was that I could never get the max cloth to attach to the geometry the way I wanted it to.
It is good to know that the max cloth follows point based deformation though.
If I can’t get simcloth to work, I may just have to figure out how to make the max cloth work. I will have to pick my battle…
I was just wondering if such a thing is even feasible with simcloth, because, like I said, I like the simplicity and speed of it.
For all I know it might be possible, I haven’t used simcloth in years, so I’d be of no help there… was just curious about the reason more than anything.
How about using an attachment constraint and attaching helpers to the surface of the deforming mesh then have simCloth follow those.
You sir are brilliant! :bowdown:
I just tried it, and the attachment constraint worked beautifully.
Sorry to dig up an old topic but maybe someone can help. I’m using SimCloth3 under a similar situation where I want a flapping flag to drive a rope. The cloth simulation wont drive the rope. I’ve tried all the constraints I could and in as many ways as I could but once the simulation starts the flag works but the rope doesnt follow. I apologize if this was too difficult to understand. Thanks again for the help.
Best Regards,
SEGAHOLIC