Hello,

            I did a search for constrained cloth groups and came across a link for the Wrap It Up! Cloth Tutorial - it's a great tutorial, but it doesn't work for what I'm trying to do. I want a cloth to drape across a cylinder, but hang in the air. When I create the cloth simulation, I make sure that the cloth will collide with the cylinder and nothing else (as I want it to just hang) and I create the constrained group at which point I want it to stick to the cylinder - however, upon simulating, the cloth just falls to the floor after it has draped down the cylinder (so I know the cloth is hitting the cylinder).

 

Any idea what's up? 

I was going to edit that post, but my edit time expired. So I'm posting two times.

 

Scratch my line where I said "I make sure that the cloth will collide with the cylinder and nothing else" because I forgot that I had it colliding with the ground as well as to create a draping/fanned out effect.

 

Anyway...here are screencaps for frames 1, 4, 10, and 20...

 

 

I think you need to parent it to the cylinder...that should keep it from falling all the way through the floor. I know that happens to me with skirts when I forget to parent them to the figure (after a few moments of yelling at the computer only to realise it's a user mess-up), so try that.

I think you will need to parent the cloth to the cylinder before the constraint will work.

Some notes (after a few experiments)...

1. Parenting is not the answer. The same thing happens - the cloth falls off the cylinder. Also, if the cloth-plane is parented to a distorted (ie, made long and thin) cylinder, the cloth-plane also gets stretched (in the same dimensions, where applicable) as soon as parented. Not wanted...

2. The same thing (the constrained cloth falling off) also happens if the long, thin cylinder is exported/imported as a new prop. Whether parented or not. This is true in both P5 & P6.

3. I also tried starting with the cylinder near the ground and moving it up during the simulation. Similar effect, the cloth, even tho constrained, still falls off...

4. And I tried using a second, large square, just above the ground, to replace the ground (just in case there was a "feature" asssociated with the ground.....but the cloth still fell off.

Where to go from here???

Some ideas (which I don't have time to try out tonight)..

• Maybe Poser is getting confused as to which object to constrain to. Perhaps exporting/importing both the cylinder & the ground (or a square), thus creating a single prop of them both will help Poser resolve its confusion (if that's what the problem is)...
• Convert the cylinder into a figure (no rigging needed, so shouldn't be too difficult)...

Sorry I couldn't help further:-(( .. but maybe what I've posted will help other avoid dead-ends..

Cheers,
Diolma

since it seems that you are not starting your animation with the cloth directly against the cylinder, Im thinking perhaps you should be using a choriographed and not a constrained group. set the cloth to collide with both the cylinder and the ground than set the row of vertexes that you wish to stick to the cylinder to be a choriographed group, start the cloth in frame 1 where you want it to fall from. than decide what frame that you think the cloth should come in contact with the cylinder, and in that frame move it to just about touching the cylinder, making sure that your choriographed vertexes are lined up with the cylinder than run your simulation allowing enough frames after your second key frame to let the cloth drape the way you want.

Turn the cylinder into a figure in the setup room.

It would appear the the constrained group only works when colliding against a figure :huh:

I got this to work using a choreographed group, but not with a Poser cylinder as the rod. There are no vertices on the primitive cylinder so the cloth has nothing to refer to.  I made a rod in Wings 3D with vertices in the required area and there were no problems with the simulation.

The screenshot shows the Poser cylinder at the top and the subdivided cylinder below.

"There are no vertices on the primitive cylinder so the cloth has nothing to refer to."

Well, actually, there are (but only at the ends of the cylinder), but I get your point...:-))

"Constrained" won't work unless there are vertices sufficiently close to the cloth that the cloth room can find them... I guess that the cloth-sim was finding that the ground prop verts were closer to the constrained verts than the ends of the P5/6 cylinder, hence it used those to "constrain" to (or maybe they were all "out-of-range", so didn't really use any.

Thanks for that dadt - It adds another bit to my understanding of the cloth-room...:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

PS - Please, everyone, ignore my previous post, dadt has provided the answer.

The default collision mode is cloth vertex against object polygon.
Turn the cylinder into a figure and the constrained group works as expected without any extra vertices.

"The default collision mode is cloth vertex against object polygon.
Turn the cylinder into a figure and the constrained group works as expected without any extra vertices."

Ummm... does that mean that the the default collision mode does not have anything to do with the constrained grouping? After all, the long, thin cylinder does have polygons, they just happen to be long and thin....so why would constraining work for long, thin polys on a figure, but not for long thin polys on a prop? Not saying it doesn't, just asking why...

I will remember all this (hopefully). I thought I knew all (errm... most of) the ins'n'outs of the cloth room, but this one caught me out. I'm very happy to now have two solutions to the problem. And many thanks to RedMagickMage for raising the problem in the 1st place..:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

Quote - "The default collision mode is cloth vertex against object polygon.
Turn the cylinder into a figure and the constrained group works as expected without any extra vertices."

Ummm... does that mean that the the default collision mode does not have anything to do with the constrained grouping? After all, the long, thin cylinder does have polygons, they just happen to be long and thin....so why would constraining work for long, thin polys on a figure, but not for long thin polys on a prop? Not saying it doesn't, just asking why...

I will remember all this (hopefully). I thought I knew all (errm... most of) the ins'n'outs of the cloth room, but this one caught me out. I'm very happy to now have two solutions to the problem. And many thanks to RedMagickMage for raising the problem in the 1st place..:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

I tried the extra collision options to see if they made any difference (they didn't for a prop), then I just stuck a single bone in and tried with just the default options.
While the simulation was running, I checked what the description was in the manual

"Constrained: Each cloth object can have one constrained group, which is
automatically created with empty contents when you clothify an object. Constrained
vertices “stick” to corresponding polygon faces of the underlying figure."

The following paragraph also mentions body parts.

So you do need a figure (and thus get body parts) before the simulator will do anything with the constrained group.

Cloth vertices in the choreographed group aren't part of a simulation, there completely controlled by the transformation (and morph) dials.