Folks: Is it possible to turn gravity OFF in the P5 Dynamic Cloth calculations? I'm trying to model a sheet of metal that a character 'punches' through, and I can sort of do it if I stop the simulation at the right point, but to get the correct look the cloth 'droops' during the simulation. You can do it with hair by turning gravity down but I can't find such a dial in the cloth room. Turning 'dynamics' to 0 disables everything, not just external forces. I thought of adding an upwards force to counter balance gravity, woudl anyone hazard a guess as to the values? Relatedly, does anyone have good cloth settings for a metal sheet? == John ==

Although you can not turn gravity off in the Cloth Room try reducing the density of the cloth.

Right, I messed around with that. That did make a huge difference, but it's not quite there. It's closer than my Mechsim try with POVRay though. The biggest issue is that the cloth still 'slumps' back to it's original shape. If it was one punch it would be OK to stop the clock at the right point, but I'm trying to actually show somthing pushing a door open and putting in a deep gouge at the same time. I found you can't change the choreographed group as a keframe, if I could I could just frame by frame fix the cloth. Any ideas on settings for a 'metalic' cloth? I really need to do plastic colissions but so far can't really do this with anything! == John ==

I'd say run your sim. Then, at the frame where the dent is supposed to be, export it as a prop. Then load it in. Make the "dented" prop invisible until that exact frame, and make the "cloth" prop suddenly invisible at that exact frame.

Or use the exported OBJ as a morph target. You wont then need the cloth room... it will have done its job in creating the morph.

How's this for an Idea. Rotate figures and props 90 degrees, so the fist would move straight up. Use a 2nd square against the first one, on the bottom and use collision. After the calculation rotate back and save for a morph. The original square should keep it's shape.

You could also use a displacement map instead. With an animated texture you could potentially get the same effect.

Beryld, interesting idea about the two objects. If I save the morph, will it be animated frame by frame? I exported a .obj as a morph and that worked pretty well. I was thinking of writing a quick and dirty C++ program to just go through the .obj frames, calculate the 'max' displacement for vertices, then replace each frame vertex with that max (by time). This way the 'metal' would stretch out, but not go back. Not sure how it would look, I may save this program for last. Right now what I did was put an 'invisible' object 'behind' the object that's doing the puncing (it's a side swipe actually), so the cloth has to stay extruded. == John ==

I tried it last night before bed. I did a new scene with just a low rez figure and two squares, the front one in defalt position, the second behind and sized up a bit. I set the squares above the figure, front square on top, collision set for bottom square and hand, then calculated, then moved the squares back to defalt position. Exported the first square as morph target. Empty scene and load new square and add the morph, save new prop. Now you can use the morphed square any way you want. It seems like a lot of work, but only took about 2 min. to do it. Also one less thing to calculate in the main scene. Start the morph at zero, a few frames later at 1.000. I think you would have more control with the hand and square ratio. Then again, a magnet on the square would do the same thing. You wouldn't have the hand shape like the calculation.