Heyo, Ive a render with the SpineBender/Astral armor on the Milhorse, and its in need of a saddle blanket. I tried working a bit with the Horsefeathers saddlepad for the P4 horse but its poking thru the saddle everywhere. What im wondering is can I import the mil horse in P5, goto the cloth room, get a reasonably thick piece of cloth to drape over the saddle area, and then SAVE that as a prop that I can import and open in ProPack, then place on the horse, texture, render, and call it a day? Respondants, please note that I have at this point never once even clicked the Cloth tab on my P5. If what I want to do is feasible and I get the instructions, it will be the start of a whole new adventure.....

It's worth a shot. You can export a frame of your cloth sim as an OBJ, then import it into PP and make it into a smart prop.

It won't be posable, though.

wheres a good starter tutorial for getting a square piece of cloth and draping it over the horse? If necessary I can make magnet morphs for limited posing, but at worst, I can pose the horse same as the render pose before bringing into clothroom and have it be a render specific or pose specific prop. Its necessary to use a piece of a movie to do this? As my final goal is a static prop, I want to do the shortest possible animation to save time, yes?

Attached Link: http://www.poserfashion.net/tablecloth.htm

You don't necessarily want the shortest possible animation. You want to give the cloth time to drape fully. Then you can pick the frame where it looks best, and export that.

got the page loaded and firing up P5, ill see how far I can get before I hit a stumbling block

"get a reasonably thick piece of cloth to drape over the saddle area", umm - no you can't, at least not easily.

Cloth-room cloth is always "zero-width" which makes it difficult to use the cloth room for this purpose..

Having said that, there ARE ways to get somwhere near what you want.

Easiest:
A) Decide you don't want the cloth to extend past the point where the horse's body starts curving inwards. The colth-room will just let it dangle ('cos of gravity) beyond that point.
B) use Collision Depth (and possibly Collision Offset) in the "Collide Against" dialogue to simulate depth. Depth increases the distance away from the collision object (the horse) that collisions start to take effect. About 1.0 (1 centimetre) should do it, maybe a little less...

You can use the "cloth square" (aka hi-res square) to make the blanket, suitably sized.

You'll probably have to adjust the scaling of the saddle to avoid poke-thru's..

It's not something I've ever tried, but if you want more specific help re-post here, and I'll see what I can do (using the Poser horse - I don't have the DAZ one)..

Oh, and what randym77 said is correct. The cloth will no longer be posable (without a lot of work) after export as a .obj

Cheers,
Diolma

Ooops - x-posts. However, what I said might still stand you in good stead.. :-)

Message edited on: 01/12/2006 15:11

Make certain you're using the Square Hi-Res prop. The other square props are only 1-2 polygons, which isn't enough to simulate cloth.

ahhhhhh thanks L_D I was in fact in the P4 runtime with standard square, im now in the P5 runtime Props>Primitives and using the correct hi-res square. Off to cloth room, thank you :)

Yes, use the high-res square primitive. And then position it horizontally over the horse.

When you get to the cloth room, hit "new simulation"
The "simulations Settings" dialogue will appear. For now, just hit OK.

Click on "Clothify..." and select "Props->Clothplane_1" (Yes, the name changes from "Square Hi-Res").

Then hit "Collide Against". Select your horse from the drop-down dialogue. In the next dialogue you can change the collision offsets as described above, if you wish.

Then hit "Calculate simulation". Wait. Watch what happens. have fun:-)

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 01/12/2006 15:38

I have to retire from the thread (and 'Rosity) now. I leave you in the capable hands of randym77 and Little_Dragon...

Cheers,
Diolma

(I'll be back tomorrow though, if necessary..)

Message edited on: 01/12/2006 15:46

Now then, how do I get this as a prop into ProPack please? Edit: do I just file export obj from cloth room, must I goto pose room first, if I return to pose room will I lose what was just done in cloth?

Message edited on: 01/12/2006 15:50

Yes, just File -> Export. You won't lose what you did in the cloth room. You'll be given the option of chosing the frame you want to export; chose one where the blanket is draped the way you like. Then check the box next to the cloth in the menu that comes up.

You won't lose anything simply by leaving the cloth room. The simulation remains in memory until you deliberately clear it, calculate another simulation, or delete the sim altogether.

Yes, you can export the .obj file for later import into ProPack. I usually export from the pose room, but I suppose that function works from the cloth room, also.

Alternatively, you can spawn a morph target for that prop, then save the prop directly to ProPack's runtime library. Cloth sims may not work in ProPack, but morphs spawned from a cloth sim will.

Any suggestions for changing settings on another simulation run to get less pokethru?

You can try reducing the collision offset/collision depth. You might be able to adjust the saddle as well.

Here is a shorter pad, with colision depth down to 0.5

offset is still at 1.0

do you think reducing offset would eliminate all pokethru or is this as good as it can get? I note the biggest pokethru is where the biggest wrinkle in the cloth is. Is there a setting to make the wrinkle less pronounced?

Reducing the offset may help.

Tweaking the simulation settings can reduce the wrinkles. Try lowering the fold resistance.

Another possibility would be a transmap that hides the part of the blanket that is under the saddle. Though it would take some trial and error to get it right.

collision depth 0.250
collision offset 0.250
fold resistance 0.250

and that TINY pokethru is one simple clonetool postwork click to fix. I doubt I can do better than this, but Ill give it a 0.000 fold resistance just for experiments sake :)

is the saddle a smart prop? It looks to placed to far back on the horse, it should be moved forward. you might try to increase the scale of the saddle and decrease the scal of the blanket.

Woo-hoo! Great work.

I think the saddle's conforming.

It looks pretty good, IMO. Perhaps a bump map for the blanket would make it look thicker and rougher, without creating poke-through.

Niles, the saddle is a conforming figure, and as soon as I use the Conform to command, it snaps to mil horse and all scaling dials become unresponsive. Considering the saddle wasnt modelled with the intent of a pad being between it and the horse, I think I got lucky with this minimal level of pokethru. Randym, couldnt have done it without you LD and Diolma Thanks again everyone!!!

Remember you can use transmaps to hide portins of the cloth that poke through.

Magnets are good, too.

@logansfury - just a thought...
Try it without conforming to (in P5/P6)...

What you can do is:

Set up your scene (in frame 1): load load & size/postion the cloth then load the saddle (don't conform, position manually). Allow some "slack" between the saddle and the horse (so the cloth can fit between).
Yeah, ok, the saddle and the cloth intersect. Ignore that for now...

Go to approx frame 20 and add a key-frame. Enter the animation editor and "break spline" on frame 20. This fixes the "end point", with the saddle in position.

Exit the editor, return to frame 1, and scale the whole saddle up so nothing intersects.

Go to approx frame 15, re-enter the animation editor and copy the 1st frame for the saddle (all of it, if it has separate parts) to frame 15, and break spline. This (should) keep the saddle at its expanded size from frame 1 to frame 15, whereupon it (should) reduce down to proper size by frame 20. (Use the scrubber to check..)

In cloth room, "collide against" both the horse and the saddle. What should happen is that the cloth will fold itself around the horse's back during frames 1-15, the the saddle will compress in (in frames 15-20) and constrict the cloth.

I have an example ready (using the Poser horse and a torus) if you need more specific help/further understanding, but I expect you get the idea..:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

(Edited to remove an very unfortunate typo; the word "Horse" has an "s"; without it the meaning changes!) :-))

Message edited on: 01/13/2006 15:21

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1134515&Start=1&Sectionid=1&filter_genre_id=0&WhatsN

Try checking "as morph target." It should keep the size and position then.

didnt work im afraid. I saved with just as morph target checked, nothing else, and it distored not only the scale but the shape

That's odd. Are you sure you chose the right frame to export? It works for me.

I saved when it was in its final draped form. It reimported with its width and lengths swapped. Ive not done any specific frame designation in any of the other exports where the scale got changed but the overall shape was retained

Try leaving all boxes unchecked, when you export it and when you import it.

Ill go thru the steps again and see if I can get a diff result. Im sure that animation tab at bottom of clothroom screen said 30 of 30

Hey randym, Ive gleaned a successful solution from your posts here! I opened P5, recalculated the simulation, then with cloth_square still selected, I did an Object>Spawn Morph, then saved to P4 runtime prop library. Closed P5, opened PP, brought in the Mil Unicorn, spun him to yTran -90 degrees (the position the clothifying was done in) then brought in the saved pad. It came in as a horizontal rectangle hovering above the horse as it did before sim calc in cloth room. I checked its properties, spun the morph dial id made to 1.000 and the pad snapped to EXACTLY the dimensions and shape of the P5 clothification! Im set, plus this dial gives some additional fine controls for diff saddles ill bet! thanks so much :) Logan

OK, that's only a torus doing the compression and it was just a quickie, but see how it gives a bit of extra "life" to the bottom of the cloth (pad)? :-))

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 15:00

Diolma, I do indeed see how the edited calculation uses the torus to demonstrate the bellyband effect :) That is a very very good realism touch! randym, I was doing the exports originally with no options checked, but importing DID have 100% of scale, and centered checked at the least. Just to have a better understanding of how the import export works, im going to do more exports as youve suggested to monitor how they import with no paramaters set in the import field.

logansfury: The import/export stuff is easily understood (although I don't have P4, so not sure if 100% correct), but:

The 100% on import (in P5/P6) refers to the "standard" figure sze. So if you imort saddle cloth at 100%, it will come in re-scaled to the size of a Poser figure. You don't want that!

Just export without anything checked (except possibly groups, although I expect you're going to texture in P4, so even that's not neccessary), and import without ANYTHING checked. You should get identical result in P4. If you check "centered", then then import may get moved.

Suggestion:
Pose horse/unicorn in P4. (and save).
Export horse as .obj (no options checked).
Import horse into P5.
Do cloth sim for saddle-pad.
Export cloth (at whatever frame you think suitable) as .obj (nothing checked).
Load P4 and the saved scene, import saddle-pad (no options checked), it should, work ....

Cheers
Diolma

(Edited due to HTML error..) :-((

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 17:44

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1135277

Diolma, thats a very powerful bit of knowledge for me, I thought that 100% referred to the original saved item dimensions, and I wondered why it failed. Thank you so much for that lesson :)

If any of youse checked out the link to the first upload with the completed and textured saddlepad prop, and liked it, ive done another version with different colored barding, please give it a look and let me know what you think.

Logan <- shameless gallery comment trollop. Edited for smaller URL which seems to load gallery faster

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 19:43

Happy to be able to help:-)) Looking forward to seeing end result! BTW - if you use my "constriction" suggestion with a longer saddle cloth, you should be able to get some interesting effects if the horse/unicorn is posed in an "animated" way. Eg, rearing, galloping etc. If galloping, try a slightly longer simulation; after the constriction has taken effect, move the horse "forwards" in the direction it is going (10 frames should be enough, so you might not need to extend the simulation after all). How far to move is a matter for experiment... Don't forget: set the simulation up then SAVE! That way, if anything goes wrong during the simulation (and Poser freezes or drops out), you won't have to keep re-setting up, just reload the save.. Cheers, Diolma