Unwrapping folded cloth

Support Materials and Textures
1

I would like to unwrap a crinkled cloth after a simulation using a “project from view”.

My intention is to render an animation of a planar sheet of cotton with a distorted logo on it. As soon as the sheet has fallen down and lies crinkled on the ground I want the logo to appear undistorted. To achieve that I have baked the whole cloth-simulation and tried to unwrap the crinkled sheet on the final frame with a “project from view” unwrapping.

Now I have the problem that it seems not to be possible to unwrap a object after a cloth simulation.
To unwrap the mesh I have to switch to edit mode - and as soon as I switch to edit mode the simulated mesh switches back to the original mesh, which makes it useless for unwrapping using “project from view”…

When I apply the cloth modifier it becomes possible to unwrap the object as desired - but the simulation gets lost.
I have tried to duplicate the cloth object and the simulation, to apply the modifier in one of the objects and copy the unwrapped UV-map to the other object - but this seems to be inpossible either.

I would appreciate it if anyone of you could give me a hint.

Thanks a lot
Tarion

2

Go to the frame you want
Duplicate the cloth object, remove its cloth modifier
Select the cloth, shift select the duplicate and in the shapekey panel use the Join as Shapes option.
Set this new shapekey to 1 to match the shape of the cloth object
UV unwrap this object as you want
Then you need to transfer these UVs from the duplicate object to the cloth object. Select the cloth object, shift select the uv unwrapped duplicate and use Ctrl+L / Transfer UV Layouts.
The cloth should now be uv unwrapped as you want

Demo: http://screencast.com/t/euPXyZiDMYXr

1 Like
3

Yeah, you are a genius.

Both - the hint with the “Join as Shapes” as well as the “Transfer UV Layouts” are very valuable.
Now everything is working fine - you made my day.

Thank you very much
-Tarion-

4

It pays to plan ahead and unwrap before you run the simulation.

5

then the logo would be distorted with the cloth ! not what the OP wants