I was trying to create a bat wing with cloth between rigged fingers:
The bat is high poly. Any ideas how to do that?
Hi…
here is one way to do it. you can hook lowres mesh vertices to single bones to your armature ( select the bone in pose mode> select the skin mesh> edit mode select the vertices to hook to that bone and hit Ctrl+H>Hook to selected Object Bone. Then use cloth sim when you hooked all the vertices to the right bones.( cloth sim needs to be at bottom of your modifier stack. After that a subdiv mod. (maybe open subdiv enabled because its cool ). Check the extra edges i did to create sharp creased corners for the skin shown in the picture… thats a little trick to do the sharp connections i did not see anywhere else… thats only for you ;). Everything else is how you setup the rig, cloth sim and animation.
That should be a good start.
Send you a link to a file in post mail. You can check how it works. Thats close to the badwing picture …not perfect because it was done fast. Good luck… btw when you select the skin mesh check modifiers and how vertices are hooked. You can do it edit mode> modiefer> any hook modifier>select. Then you see it.
Thanks a lot 
. I’ll check it out soon
I checked it up.
First of all i have to admit i was planning to create this only by using weight paint and shape keys (shape keys mainly to create that strained skin effect, while skin hits the air). But then i thought… what if i’ll use that cloth simulation, as i’ve never used that in blender yet. So…
Generaly it looks good, Piet, but is there some more precise method to pin cloth to bones’ mesh? In your file there are still some gaps:
I was modeling both fingers and skin between them as a whole mesh:
I suppose firstly i must separate skin from fingers, as it’s impossible to make just certain faces be cloth, right?
But then I’d like to pin those vertices from cloth to their corresponding vertices of the fingers, considering their weight (so there will be no gaps). Just out of curiosity, is it possible?
It works also with your model. But a bit different. Thought you had separated meshes.When you did all the weightpaint for the fingers create a new vertex group where ALL the weights from fingers are included. (don`t weightpaint the skin between the fingers). Use that vertex group as pinning group in your cloth sim. Btw. I realy would not use that highres model for clothsim in that case but test it… maybe performance is good at your pc. If you like to use the first idea without gaps you could place the skin a bit more clever inside the fingers than i did and maybe use some more edges and creases at the skin along the fingers. But test everything. Happy blending.
But there is only one slot for pinning. Do you mean i should mix all vertex groups around a skin into one?
Have there to be multiple skin meshes for every pair of fingers?
Don’t weightpaint the skin? Shouldn’t vertex group for pinning be a part of a cloth-like mesh?
yes I mean you should use that slot for all finger weights… you can do that by creating a new vertex group where all that weights are collected.
no… i did say it works with your model… or should… you don`t need multiple skin meshes… just use your model. btw. there are realy more ways to to it like animation without cloth and only bones.
No. because you do the pinning with the vertex group of all the fingers.
Hopefully this doesnt become to abstract. There are realy more things to consider when you do things it like that. For example cloth and physics sims needs some precomputing or pre simulation before an animation. I try to help... and find some time too ... and sorry for my bad english.. hate it. And forgive me if I cant help you much… Think a good way is to test and play arround with all that things. Thats realy the best way because you learn how to use different techniques together. You can also have more than one armature on one character…just in case you challenge the problem with the body of that bad bat ;).
Ok. Thanks for the answers. I’ll check it all up soon. I know how to do it with bones and shape keys. Just thought cloth would earn me some extra time of weight-painting.
o.k. i truely beliefe cloth can save a lot of time when it is all is done in a good rig. but thats an other point. cheers and good night…
I tried it now and sadly it doesn’t work. I separated just one skin between leg and tail to test it, i made this skin a cloth. Next i copied leg and tail vertex groups, connected it with each other and made that connected vertex group be pinning group for the skin (there were no pinning vertices in the skin - like you advised).
Final effect is like this: when i’m moving the leg skin is being detached from the leg (pinning doesn’t work).
I also tried to add outer vertices of the skin to the pinning group. Effect is that only that added vertices are following the leg - rest of the skin remains unaffected:
i tried to bake cloth cache, set keyframes for the leg. Doesn’t work.
slawek. could you send me a private message with a link to your file? I will not give it to anyone else. All that picture posting doesnt allow me to give you an good answere. Thats a bit to complex to me to do it with that pictures only and needs to much time to find the way you need to do that.
Maybe someone else can figure out what`s the best when analysing only that pictures. I can not. Think there is a lot to do with that model and rig and simulatiuon. I would take a look at it and try to help… if I can.
I sent it to you.
Hi slawek,
i downloaded the file and here is the first problem with overlapping geometry in your model.
The next thing is that it is realy to hires like i thought. Even without cloth simulation it is to highres for realtime animation. Why not doing the model again and using “subdivision modifier” ? Thats how people usually do it. I`ll check some more and tell you later.
Hi slawek,
here is a file i did fast and because of that things are not perfect but should show how it can be done.
on the first layer is how it works. check the vertex groups for body and skin wings. also check the cloth sim.
on the scond layer is a model. when you model that bat in this pose it is much better for animation and rigging in my experience.
third layer shows some better topology for the skin between the fingers(just click the model then you see some crease pencil notations.
this is how i would do it… good luck!
edit: did something wrong with vertexweights of the body that causes stretching of the fingers. here is a file where it is fixed: