Can I export cloth shaped by animation? (newbie)

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Can someone help me with how to export a shape that animation produces?

I can simulate cloth and use animation to drape it nicely over a table, by frame, say 200.

How do I export a mesh object of that shape to use for another program (in my case, Second Life)? I can export the time=zero shape fine, but I want to export the shape at time = 200.

Thanks

2

Go to frame 200 and apply the cloth modifier to create the mesh you can then export

3

OK, Richard. When I attempt to use the “apply” button in the cloth modifier of my grid, it informs me that “Modifier cannot be applied to Mesh with Shape keys.” If I use the “apply as shape” button, the mesh appears to return to a flat mesh with no draping at all times and the cloth modifier goes away.

I’m in Blender 2.60a. My “cloth” is a mesh “grid” with the cloth modifier and cloth physics (default with self-collision) selected.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

4

Either remove your shapekeys (in Object Data panel) before applying the modifier or look in the Object Data panel to see the shapekey you created when you used the ‘Apply as Shape’ option.

5

I had the same prob at first, Reticula, but if you think about it for a sec it makes sense. Once the Cloth sim frame is applied as a Shape, it acts like any other shape key, and doesn’t influence the mesh unless 1) it has a non-zero value in its Value field, or 2) that particular key is pinned in the Shape Keys section of Object Data. So when Cloth gets applied as a Shape (Value = 0 by default, like all other shape keys), the mesh immediately reverts to Basis, which in most cases is the original flat plane.