Cloth Test!

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I ran into a little problem while trying to do an animation test for T-Boom.

Basically, after my last post, I wanted to add some cloth simulations to the model.  I didn't want to go too crazy and try to simulate cloth on every article of his clothing.  The t-shirt and shorts are close fitting enough I wasn't worried about how they moved as long as they moved with his body, but the hoodie, I felt, needed to sway when moving or when in the wind.

 Some of you may remember I ran into this problem when I was working on my movie short.  It was concerning Huffenagle's trench coat and I wanted it to simulate cloth.  I even did a quick test (seen somewhere in an earlier post) of him rotating at the waist and you can see his trench coat fan out.  So, I thought a hoodie wasn't going to be any trouble.

The difference between my movie short and this film is, as I have said countless times, that the characters for the short were as simple as I could get them and that the characters for this movie will be more complicated.  Well, that is what was giving me so much trouble.

See, the characters in the short did not have particle hair.  Their hair was part of their mesh and simply colored.  The characters for Xam and Power Dog have particle hair, or their hair is composed of individual vertex points (strands).  It turns out that the software I am using for my movies (which I absolutely love and I am not criticizing) has a problem setting up collisions between objects and particles.  Short story, when T-Boom's hoodie would bounce of his head his hair would show through his hoodie.

Finally, after days of searching for a solution I figured out a way to make it work.  I feel it's a bit of a cheat, I'm not going to even tell you what it is, but I got it working good enough for my little film.

So, here's the T-Boom cloth test.  I even tightened up his lip syncing which was something I wasn't happy about in the previous test.  Again, there is sound so make sure your speakers are adjusted accordingly...



And there it is.  Pretty cool I think.

Now, I was going to do a great big test of the character but I really don't see the point.  I've animated enough during my short and I really just want to get on to the next part, which is to update the Thomas model.

So, that is what I'm going to do. 

I hope to have a Thomas test for you shortly.

Later!