I’m facing two problems with the cape in my project, remaining attached to the 3D model when it’s animating around.
I’ve taken my character into Mixamo as a FBX file, rigged it in a T pose, then bought it back to Blender, then downloaded a rig of animation preset as a FBX and applied the rig to my current model. The model animates and dances perfectly.
However I’d like the cape to also remain attached to the figure through the whole animation. I have created a weight map on the cape and attached vertex’s cloth settings with collision and self collision enabled. The body of the object has collision enabled as well.
Now I’ve selected the cape layer and in edit mode, done Ctrl-H to hook the object, then back in Object mode with the Empty I’ve Ctrl-P it with the figure. However when I click play, the cape isn’t following with the movement of the figure in the scene
Also as I have the cape already set originally as it appears in the Rest position, is there away for it to update on the model when in pose mode, without manually editing it around the shoulders?
I’m racking my brain with this, probably missing something simple…
If you have used hooks, then go in the modifier tab and make sure the hook modifiers come before the cloth simulation, or else their effect will just be added after the simulation is already calculated.
For the cape resting around the shoulder, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you want. I see in your first picture that the cape goes through the shoulders. For that problem, I would try using armature deform on the cape instead of hooks. You assign the cape to the character’s armature, then use the weight transfer tool (search for tutorials about transferring weights between objects). This will make the cape have exactly the same deformations as the body. Then, you put the section of the cape that touches the shoulders into your cloth pinning group, so the part of the cape touching the body is fully rigged like the body.
But I might have misunderstood. Is the problem rather that the cape doesn’t follow the character around because it’s not simulated yet? For that, the solution would be to deactivate the simulation’s visibility until the animation is done and you are ready to bake the physics. If that’s not enough, then deactivate the entire cape’s visibility.
Ok etn249 thanks for the reply yeah I have put the hook mods above the cloth simulation, I’ll look into searching for transferring weights between objects.
Yes the cape doesn’t move around with the character I did manage to attach the cape and move it with the character when it was in t pose earlier. But as soon as I applied a rig, it lost the attachment settings, even when I reapplyed an empty and parented it again.
Ok starting to get somewhere now, followed a tutorial on youtube with transferring weights, the cape now moves with the figure. However it’s causing some stretch errors, I have the hook layer at front. But its still jumping around the vertex pinning group.
Cloth simulation in Blender is… not very good, IMO. It’s poorly implemented and hasn’t been updated in a good long while. I’ve heard rumors of people getting good cloth results in Blender, but I’ve never actually seen a video or demonstration where cloth behaved well consistently in a reproducible way. Do you have access to any other 3D software? Doing the cloth part of it in something more suited to cloth might help
I’m thinking now, would it work if I imported the model with Alembic file to animate it with cape in Marvelous designer? Then export the Cape animation in a file back into Blender on the figure? Would be the best option?
There are still things to try with Blender. I seem to understand you have managed to do the weight transfer and attach the cape to the armature. If this is the case, then what about removing the hooks completely and relying only on the armature?
Then, something else that could cause the cloth to jitter around like that is the playback settings. If you changed them, make sure they are set to “play every frame”, or else simulations can skip frames and become messed up.
Then, I would go to the cloth settings and delete any old cache (making sure to change any setting back and forth to force the cache to really update and delete itself, Blender’s physics caches can have trouble updating when you delete them). Then, a fresh bake would be free from old mistakes that could have been baked previously.
It totally can work in Blender, in fact, here is a basic exemple scene I did in 5 minutes: cloth_exemple.blend (838.4 KB)
I’ve tried the steps, but it seems to still be messing up I’m thinking of taking it into Marvelous Designer but there seems to be a bug with MD it will only import 321 frames instead of the 840 frames. Even when I have exported frame rate at 24fps and said the frame start 1 to 840. MD seems to only handle 321 frames of it.
Well, I am not sure I can tell what’s going on without seeing the scene, but I am still not out of ideas.
In my test scene it seems to matter what the cloth object is parented to:
In my case, parenting the cloth to the armature works well, but removing the parent and relying only on the armature modifier causes weird movements.
An other thing that could have happened is that you have done some changes to the models or moved them after the cloth simulation was already created and this messed with the physics, because they expect the mesh to be placed differently. Try removing the cloth simulation and re-creating it. That can sometimes help.
Beyond that, I would need to see the scene to tell what’s going on.
I think I might have moved the cape layer slightly, i’ll bring the cape layer back in again tomorrow and follow the steps again. See if it fixes the problem
Thank you very much etn249 think I’ve cracked it with your massive help! This is the result I got in the end… I think I need to make some adjustments to give the cape a bit more weight though.
Excellent! If you imported the character, it’s probably the wrong scale, so you will have to compensate by going in the cloth settings, under fields weights, and increase the gravity’s influence.
yeah I have put the hook mods above the cloth simulation, I’ll look into searching for transferring weights between objects.
I did manage to attach the cape and move it with the character when it was in t pose earlier. But as soon as I applied a rig, it lost the attachment settings, even when I reapplyed an empty and parented it again.
