Any way to limit the movement of a cloth sim?

I have a villain in a cape doing an action scene, and when the villain does something extreme, like a back flip, the cape will end up all over his head or wrapped around his neck or something! Although hilarious, is there a way to stop the simulation from going in specific places?

  1. You can set up non-rendering collision objects to block the cloth from specific areas.

  2. If the cape is reacting wildly, you may want to adjust the Cloth parameters, even Leather is liable to go nuts under fast action.

  3. Probably the method with most control is to use both cloth and armature animation on the cape. This can be done using the Pinning Group. Any vertices with weight other than zero can also be influenced by an armature, so by careful weighting of the Pinning vertex group, you can balance the cloth sim with armature control. It takes a fair amount of work to balance the influences, but it can be done. General procedure is to keyframe the armature moves first, then sim the Cloth part, and make adjustments as needed until it looks as you want it to.

Pinning group weighting can also reduce the overall cloth effect without employing other influences.

double post, sorry

so your saying I need to (for #3) hand keyframe the cape?

and for #1, could one make it so it only affects his cape? So for example, If he gets really close to another cloth, he wouldn’t affect that cloth as well?

Yes, but not every part of the motion, just the bigger, more general moves that keep the cape where you want it. The Cloth sim will add its own motion as well, that look more like cloth, but with less extreme reaction to fast motions. It’s always a tradeoff between the two influences.

Collision and Cloth objects have to share a layer for collision to work, so if you use Layers cleverly, then the answer is “Yes.”

I’ll try #3

Can you please make a tutorial of some sorts for #3? I’m lost already :stuck_out_tongue:

hmmm i have a problem where a skirt on my model is moving ‘up’ instead of fluttering and making verticle folds…