Hello! I have an issue in Blender. I have a character that I sculpted and I will be creating a retopo session on it. I will also be creating clothing for it, probably in MD or Blender. I will see. Anyways, how can I afterwards pose the character while the clothing follows the posed character limbs? Is that possible to do it in a good way?
Cheers,
Kris
Under Shape sub-panel of Cloth simulation, can be indicated a Pin Vertex Group.
A vertex of cloth mesh with a weight of 1 will be fixed in cloth sim.
You just need to have cloth as a separated object parented to same armature, and such vertices rigged to armature, to obtain a cloth simulation following character.
If you prefer skip simulation, because it would be too heavy computations, rig cloth over limbs as character limbs, and use some modifiers or corrective shape keys to make adjustments on joints.
Thank you for your quick answer. Much appreciated. I will try to test both ways. I will get back here with the results. I hope I understood it correctly.
If you have a MD license, I highly advise you simulate the clothing there. Unless this is the tight kind, in that case you can probably rig it easily in Blender. But MD is by far the better option for cloth sim
If your clothing is complex, zippers, pockets, buttons, etc… you may want to look into building a simplified base mesh, running the cloth sim on that, and surface deforming the actual clothing mesh to the simulation object.
I don’t know if this is technically a “good” way, but it works for me.
Hey. No, I don´t have a license yet. You mean pose the character first and than create custom clothing in MD and simulate it there? It is a cloak, wide pants and a loose shirt on a “fat little character”. I have specific art direction I have in my mind so MD is a good idea. I also bought Simple Clothes addon for Blender.
This is a good idea. You mean over a retopo low poly model? I will look into it. Thanks alot. No it is not very complex, although I have a specific look for them. I want to learn more about Blender and simulation but MD might be the solution.
It’s been a while but you would create the patterns over the tposed character in MD and make sure every shot in Blender prerolls from the tposed character as well, so that the clothing nicely falls into place in MD
I don’t think that’s what I mean, exactly. Not a low poly model of the character. I mean, build a simplified version of the cloth object. So, for example, I do this a lot with jeans. The jeans, the ones that will be rendered, have modeled pockets, a snap, belt loops, and a fly. The simulation object is basically the jeans, with all those features removed. I usually build it by shrinkwrapping the model of the simulation object to the render object as I model it, so I know they’re the same size and shape
I pulled the sim object out to the side here for visual purposes, you want them to be in the same place if you try this method.
oh I get you. Thanks alot Hadriscus!!
Thanks alot. So from what I understood, I should make a low poly base mesh of the clothes, (can I retopo the high poly?) and then shrinkwrap them onto the render clothing? Nice of you to share a pic.
Yes, that’s how I do it. Just don’t go too low poly, or you cost your cloth sim quality.
Not exactly. There’s a modifier called Surface Deform.
Hi in case you are interested check this detailed tutorial and his channel which has more more info about it https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeo08VYpYn82JZGSjcWMS8WHOW_wsPP2w&si=sVqvljlHwHdOH15M
Well, I know this might sound either too easy or a troll, but you can just turn on the Cloth Sim and run with it. It’s the fun and great part of Cloth Sim to be honest.
Pose your character, and set a key frame for all your bones on Frame 24. This is quite a magic number, because you don’t want to set the key frame too quickly. You have to remember that 24 frames is actually only a second.
Now, go back to Frame 0, or 1, and reset all your bones’ transformation.
Go to your cloth object, and turn on the cloth sim. Then, just run the animation, and see how it turns out.
Wow, thanks alot. That sounds pretty sweet. I have to learn about Cloth Sim. That is a really good start!
Yeah, that is a comprehensive tutorial. I will look into it when the time is right to make the animation. Thank you for the heads up! Really cool of you!
Hi @khosea
Great thread here, lots of good advice in here.
I’m working my way through blender’s cloth sim. Skinny character, big, baggy Jedi type of robe with a hoodie. My initial test with the cloth sim sucked bad.
I posted here about it and @G_De fixed the file for me. It convinced me to use blender’s cloth sim and not just rig the robe as a mesh. Thanks again @G_De !
So what will your character be doing? How will it be interacting with the clothing?
I need my character to push back the hoodie and push up it’s arm sleeves. I rigged this by adding in extra bones to animate the robe.
@Hadriscus since it sounds like you’ve used Marvelous Designer, how does it handle character interaction with the clothing? Will it handle that scenario? How is exporting from blender to MD, simulate in MD, then import into blender?
I don’t mean to hi-jack this, I just want to stimulate good convo on the subject
Randy
I’m sorry, I don’t have first hand experience. I’ve seen coworkers use it back when I was in London (in…2018!). It’s incredibly stable. Of course you should always sanitize your animation as much as possible : use substeps in case of fast movement, start prerolling from a t-pose, etc.
There were two people working on this mocap character and adding all sorts of weird clothing and effects, one was a legit Houdini wizard working with Houdini (that was before Vellum though) and the other was a vfx rookie working with MD, who had never even used MD outside of this project. Well that guy iterated quite a few times faster than the Houdini guy, trying all sorts of fabrics, shapes, etc. It seemed easy -as far as I could tell the program holds your hand throughout the process- and the results were sturdy af. So that’s where my recommendation comes from. There are absolutely tools to constrain/pin your garments too, but I cannot tell you the specifics.
Hey! Yes, thid thread has lots of cool advice. Great to hear that your experience with cloth simulation in Blender is moving forward. My character has the same setup. A robe with a hoodie, pants and a simple shirt. I don´t have a complicated animation for him. Since he will be holding a staff (with lots of stuff on it) I want him to move from side to side, and sort of hit the ground with it. So I need the robe to follow his arm as he does that. I still haven´t really figured it out yet, because I´m still sculpting him to be the ebst he can be. It is a dragon child. For use in cinematics.
Im thinking about getting a MD license just for this project. I have used the trial and I loved it.
