Quote - "... I left the additional cloth collisions to the default" - then, is there some typo in the last two parameters? Air damping 0.2 is for wind tight jackets or so, and Dynamic friction 0.02 is for lubricated teflon or alike :)

No, I'm talking about --under "simulation settings"-- there is the "additional cloth collision options", like "Object vertex against cloth polygons", etc. I left that to their default.

(... continued)

Then I looked into friction. The concept of Static and Dynamic friction is sort of understood by most people: Static holds the cloth in place until the 'driving force' gets too large, and Dynamic works against the driving force when the cloth is moving. Both are independant of cloth density, and Dynamic friction is independant of cloth speed (unlike for instance air damping). 

In the books, both are modeled as ratios between forces, no units to convert. The literature values for Static are similar or a bit higher than Dynamic, and range from 0.04 (teflon) to over 1 (iron/iron on railroad tracks etc), something on skin goes for about 0.7 and some cloth-to-cloth might go for 0.3, and anything in between.

Dynamic friction in Poser is slightly different, and although it's independant of speed and density, it's not a ratio between forces but a material-dependant acceleration by itself. However, taking unit conversion (to cm and frames, like the gravity constant) into account, we can quite safely put in the literature values as a happy coincidence.

From tis we can infer that the Poser default value 0.1 is not too bad for cloth over a wooden table, but is far too low for cloth over cloth or skin. Good for Cloth Room, not too well for Clothes Room :). Values up to 0.7 are recommended.

This is for higher cloth speeds (> 10 cm/frame) only. At lower speeds its effect decreases and the results are effected by Static friction as well. This might be a good idea from a simulation point of view, but it's not according to the books.

Static friction in Poser is entirely different from real life. It prevents the cloth from moving indeed, not effected by Dynamic friction, but there is no relationship (discovered yet) between measured values and the literature ones. The concept fits but the model does not. So for those who want to match cloth behaviour to life of want to match Static to Dynamic, a translation table was provided. 

From this we can infer that the Poser default 0.5 is not too bad for cloth over a wooden table but could be raised to say 0.85 for cloth over cloth or skin. But for smooth materials with Dynamic values as low as 0.3 or 0.1, the accompanying Static must be reduced to 0.1 or far less.

Another observation is that Static plays a role on moving cloth as low speeds. This is not what one expects from the books. So, in order to improve image or animation results one not only has to take care of Dynamic but of Static also.
Unfortunately, this "low speed range" (1-10 cm/frame) is very common in our clothing use of the Cloth Room, and the meaning of the dial-values for both are very different. Since friction plays a relevant role in the interaction between cloth and figure, this is the place where our artistic / alien experience or gut feeling will creep in.

Finally, Cloth self-friction is a mystery to me as no change in value provides any effect on any result in animation or final image. I have no fit for even the concept.

So, stretching will be next.

I finished short animation pose (~500 frames) and if there is anybody willing to experiment with cloth simulation on this pose just let me know and I'll post it here.

It is for p8 female only.

You can see it together with my first (since long time) clothing attemp (total disaster:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHG9vEcXH-4

yeah, please do.

Now I'm thinking it'd be easer to make simuation if this animation started from "standing pose" - no need for additional preparations which are required at present.

It can be easy changed (using animation palette):

increase number of frames (about 100)

drag and drop frames from <1 to 76> to the end (so frame 1 will overlap frame 446)

drag and drop frames from <76 to last> to frame 1

remove empty frames from the end

Quote - @Grichter

to be precise, when a clothified object is refined into object-groups (panel 3) and each dynamic group has got it's own parameters (panel 4), then these go with the object when being unclothified and clothified again (eg in another sim in the same scene), and also when being saved into the Poser library (! not in other saves and exports) for reuse in other scenes as well.

So one can (should?) indeed create a set of dynamic clothes, with all the belt loops and buttons in the right decorative groups, and with various dynamic groups each with their own parameters. So the leather not only looks like leather from the materials room but also behaves like leather in the cloth room. And of course users can change that, in materials as well as in behaviour. 

But while one can distribute new materials for a piece of clothes without the object, one cannot do that for cloth settings. This creates a copyright issue. But there exist some installer/zipper that requires the original file for input, what is it called? That might do a job on "dynamizing" existing clothes by the community without the rights violations.

Let me be a little more clear. I have a purchased item that I changed the sim settings to my liking on and resaved back out and grabbed the settings like these..

            stitchVertsGroupProperties
            {
            U_Bend_Resistance    3.000000
            V_Bend_Resistance    3.000000
            U_Stretch_Resistance    75.000000
            V_Stretch_Resistance    75.000000
            Shear_Resistance    30.000000
            U_Scale    1.000000
            V_Scale    1.000000
            Density    0.030000
            Thickness    0.000000
            Spring_Resistance    5000.000000
            Air_Damping    0.050000
            Dynamic_Friction    0.0500000
            Static_Friction    0.300000
            Friction_Velocity_Cutoff    30.000000
            Cloth_Cloth_Force    10.000000
            U_Bend_Rate   0.000000
            V_Bend_Rate   0.000000
            Cloth_Cloth_Friction   0.000000
            Damping_Stretch   0.050000
            get_friction_from_solid   0
            Use_Edge_Springs   0
            anisotropic   0
            }

then using a python script I have without revealing the guts of the script from PhilC without permission created a new script that converted a sample of the above to this

if sim:   
    sim.SetDynamicsProperty(poser.kClothParmCodeUBENDRESISTANCE, 12)
    sim.SetDynamicsProperty(poser.kClothParmCodeVBENDRESISTANCE, 12)
    sim.SetDynamicsProperty(poser.kClothParmCodeSHEARRESISTANCE, 10)

After I made my script I trashed the saved off item, since I now can load my settings via the scripts menu.

IE some products come with rendersettings files, or you can save your own. I don't see how saving off the sim settings for an easy reload vs going thru the hassle of making-editing a script is a violation of a copyright, or the same would apply to saving off render settings that you can load later.

My point being that it there are a lot of settings variations between say a cotton T-Shirt type look vs how thin leather would react to try to remember them all or take the time to write them all down. Being able to save off your personal sim tweaks and reuse more easily is what I am suggesting. As people push the material room further, you can take a simple cloth and make it take on the look of a lot of different materials that you can apply to the same cloth. Being able to load sims that match the cloth surface you have changed something to would be a heck of a time saver and also allow a user to get repeatable results easier.

Quote - > Quote - You can already.

If I set up a simulation and do all my cloth settings before I save the clothing prop, those are saved with the prop. If I also gave my .dyn file that's created when you create a new sim, you could use that also. At least I think you can...lol.

edit: actually, you can't do the latter. I was thinking for some reason that you could load the .dyn file, but you can only create and delete.

But if someone gave all the other settings in say, the readme file, and the cloth settings are saved with the prop, it would be rather easy to set up.

Laurie

Laurie, from what the wiser minds appear to be indicating, all those other settings are an essential part of any given item of clothing. You're a clothing designer (with a pretty awesome reputation, now, I might add )... you really don't want people mucking around with your recommended settings and then coming back with a "Please explain..." --- it's like, "hey, just follow the recipe and you'll be right"... right?

Actually, I find it's the cloth settings that are the tricky part and those, thank goodness, get saved with the prop...lol. All the rest is just how long you want it to drape, the number of frames for your sim, what/who to collide against, etc. - all of which will be different from simulation to simulation. Even the constrained/soft-decorated/rigid parts are saved with the prop if set up correctly beforehand.

The cloth settings are the parts that confuddle ppl the most, and they do get saved inside the prop ;o).

Laurie

to my understanding, gary wants a script or something, and a list that has an entry for leather, and accompanying parameter settings. When you select that entry, the script loads the according parameters into the cloth room panel 4, for the selected cloth-object-group. PLus some ways to manage the list itself, or to make some library item from it.

This way he doesn't need a settings document or whatever, and retype the values over and over again. And ... the community can share list entries or so.

That must be do-able. Not for me, I'm not that good in poser scripts yet.

so this type of triangles are the best for poser cloth?

Quote - to my understanding, gary wants a script or something, and a list that has an entry for leather, and accompanying parameter settings. When you select that entry, the script loads the according parameters into the cloth room panel 4, for the selected cloth-object-group. PLus some ways to manage the list itself, or to make some library item from it.

This way he doesn't need a settings document or whatever, and retype the values over and over again. And ... the community can share list entries or so.

That must be do-able. Not for me, I'm not that good in poser scripts yet.

I have a script by PhilC. What I want is a simple drop down that allows me to save the sim settings or load a set I saved before as a feature to the next version of Poser. Using a Python script if you add a new one you have to reload poser to get it to show up in the script menu.

Bottom line is that the cloth room needs presets, including a user save feature.

yesterday, I contacted the SM people on some issues mentioned before, I looked closely into Stretch and I ran an cloth sim on Adom's animation.

@Gary: the issue is re-phrased quite well above. Please file it as a feature request at SM itself, I think they're not following threads like this for picking up user requirements.

On the copyright: when I obtain a dress (bought or free) I can make materials for it and publish them freely. But when I turn it into a dynamic dress, groupings and cloth-property details included, I cannot publish it without including the dress mesh itself. Or I should use RTEncoder and use the original OBJ for key.

@SM on the Reset button - it does not reset Stretch damping.

Known bug, will be handled in a future release.

@SM on the [Strat] field in the sim settings - weird results when you enter anything but 1. The sim still starts at 1 but the resulted are mapped to later frames in the animation.

SM completely failed to understand the issue, even after multiple rephrases. Given gravity, figure moves and anything else they see other place to start a sim then in frame 1. So you can generate a sim from frame 1 on and use it later in the animation. That only makes sense if the figure is not moving, as in cloth over a table, not clothes over a figure.

@Adom: I started the test applying the animation to Vicky wearing a long gown. Nothing special, but the dress did not behave well. To be continued...

@Stretch

I succeeded in doing the physics and math on Stretch resistance as well as Stretch damping, but I did not succeed (yet) in translating that to the Poser dial values and behaviour.  Next to that, I have not been able to find any cloth-related numbers (material characteristics tables) in literature. 

The best way to observe what happens is to hang a piece of cloth down vertically, and put the upper row of vertices in a choreographed group. Then just run the sim.

First it will bounce up and down, and then it comes at rest as the bouncing dampens out. You can measure that the cloth has enlongated, the bottom line of it has come down.

• the final enlongation is independant of the Stretch damping, it's about proportional to the cloth density, and proportional to the square (!) of the length of the cloth. This BTW is all in sync with the physics model. And of course it depends on Stretch resistance, the higher the value the less stretching occurs. This dependancy is less than proportional, each time you double the resistance the stretch itself increases by about 160%.

 - Stretch damping effects the bouncing. The higher the value the smaller the bounce amplitude, the sooner it's damped out and the lower the bouncing frequency. This again is in sync with the physics model.

For practical use this means that high damping just means less frames in the sim for a stable result, and in animation a more stable behaviour of the cloth too.

When I just look around, leather and woven non-rubbers (like denim, linen) hardly stretch, unless the weave is quite lose, like silk. Knits however do stretch a lot. In my impression the Poser defaults are far too low for normal blouses, skirts, gowns, trousers and so on.

@Friction

During my debate with SM I stumbled onto Tutorial Manual pg 166, which read for Dynamic Friction: 

Again using an example, Silk moving over a steel surface has low resistance, while cotton moving over skin or coarse sandpaper over rough wood has high resistance.

Which was exactly what was found earlier. The default 0.1 is to low, 0.7 is a better estimate. Again, Cloth Room is not; Clothes Room. The defaults are for clothing a table or covering a car, not for dressing a figure.

Quote - Which was exactly what was found earlier. The default 0.1 is to low, 0.7 is a better estimate. Again, Cloth Room is not; Clothes Room. The defaults are for clothing a table or covering a car, not for dressing a figure.

Extremely interesting. So, may I conclude that the cloth room is not at a state of perfection Sm would like to think it is for the purposes it has reported been designed: clothing humanoid figures? No wonder SM isn't listening to you. Others have been over this ground before with SM, with about as much success as you. I do want to thank you for making the effort to talk to them: this was precisely the point of this thread: to get savvy users to bring Cloth Room's issues to light and point them out to SM. Because of the inherent difficulty of the interface, too many users gave up trying to make sense of it and so the underlying functional issues that you are uncovering never came to light. The fact that artists like Laurie and Grappo are able to make use of this unreliable mechanism speaks volumes of their paitence and skills, not of the mechanism itself.

Thank you so, so much for this hard work, aRTBee! You deserve much credit for your preserverance and strength of sense of purpose!

Well, understand that aRtBee is talking about default settings, not what the app can do. The settings are easily enough changed; it's just that without presets, the average user has no clue what to change them to. And one would think that by default the basic setting would start off with - say - cotton as a starting off point, rather than who-knows-what.

When you set up an application to manage clothing for figures, as one would have presumed the "Cloth Room" in a programme called "Poser" which is used, presumably, to pose humanoid figures, the defaults should have been focused on that purpose, not placing cloth on a table, etc. Put settings wrong, and functionality drops. This has been a problem with the material room: no one really knew - or could divine from the manual - what purpose all those nodes served. It took a mathematician to unlock the secrets ... sort-of reverse engineer to determine what the material room could and couldn't do. Thank GOODness for Bagginsbill.

But at least most of the node settings were correct (if poorly documented). Here, we have a bewildering array of settings that have to be tweaked in order to be useful for the proported use: dynamic clothing. Sheesh, I have to do the same thing when I use the morph tool (which I'm discovering, to my delight, and which is breathing new life into conforming clothing)... one has to set strength down to .02 or .03 instead of the default setting of .20 for pull, or you haved a mess on your hands.

And yet, SM says their product is perfect. Have a read of this thread, SM, and counter with evidence of your own.

i dont understand where the problem is. the default settings dont work.i agree

but if you change the ''folds'' to 40 you can get good pants and shirts.

ha ha

defaults are for linen on wood = cloth over table. So density and airdamping are ok (linen), friction is off (over wood instead of over skin).

IceBoy is an idealist, at least a bit, I'm afraid. Currently I'm in the middle of testing the effects of mesh structure, mesh density and relations with the Fold, Stretch and Shear settings. 

I've found serious differences between mesh structures on Fold etc behaviour, at same parameter settings. I've found a better understanding of Fold and Shear too. There is no best structure, but one structure is far better for leather while another structure is better for linen, and a third one for knits. 

Very interesting, lots of work, results after Christmas, I guess. Sorry for that.

In the meantime :) perhaps someone can start thinking about a mesh-re-topolizer. From quad to zigzag to hex to X-tri to diagonal and so on. For parts of a mesh so one can do lace & leather in one piece. Just thinking out loud. 

BTW - SM reminds me of some sort of a docter-joke. 
me: it's cold outside, I want to wear a coat but when putting it on my shoulder hurts that much.
docter:
a) then don't go outside 
b) then don't wear a coat
c) then learn to put on coats like a Pro, which is a training issue, not a medical one. 

Happy Days

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=61017

this is what i get. there is something wrong with the hood. i can not get it to work.

".*..can someone download the hooded sweatshirt  *
Done so
...and test it out
Will do, but first I'm finishing my first round of cloth structure tests. It's quite a nice pice BTW, compliments.

If I assess from the image itself, is it about a 2x2cm vertex density on the shirt and 1x1 on the hood? All quads?

All these interact with stretch resistance/damping and cloth density as well, so testing continues.

But for the moment, this is the summary from the enclosed 5 page non-technical non-detailed report (with no math, no physics and no tables guaranteed).

SUMMARY

If you want non-woven non-knit, like rubber, leather, fleece etc, use Quads in high resolution (20mm) because low resolutions (80mm) freeze up. The higher the resolution, the thinner it looks.
The higher you make the Shear-resistance, the more it looks like leather. The higher you make the Fold-resistance, the more it looks like rubber. In order to turn it from a thicker kind of massive rubber to an elastic band, you have to pump up the stretch parameters.

If you want woven or knit cloth, use diagonals. At low resolution at medium (50) Shear-resistance it does reasonable cotton or linen, use Fold-resistance to vary from summer dress (0.5) to thin curtain (500).
At high Shear-resistance it might freeze up, at low shear-resistance it either makes a wet or an overly elastic impression. At high resolution you can do silk (very low Fold-resistance), satin (low Fold-resistance) to chamois-leather (high Fold-resistance and high Shear-resistance) but please avoid the low Shear-resistance/high Fold-resistance as the plague. It’s the most unstable thing you’ve ever seen.

Zigzags make better woven cloth, X-tris at high resolution make better silks and satins, and Hex’s make better knits and better quality silks. But they are far harder to obtain from your modeler than Quads and Diagonals.

so, lets look at ice-boys hooded sweater.

The body is quads at about 20mm mesh density (I count about 25 vertices at the body width which I estimate at 50 cm). At default settings this makes a rubberish fleece with bold folds, which is what I see. And which is what we want, I guess, since this is the intended kind of stuff for this kind of clothing.

The hood has double the density, 10mm. This makes a thin quite elastic rubberish fleece at default settings. Elastic does not mean stretching but means instable, bouncing or wobbling around, and - for quads - with a tend to asymmetry lowering the left side. This is what I see also.

The elasticity effect can be undone by making the hood the same vertex density as the body. This, BTW, kills the need for two dynamic groups with different cloth parameters, as vertex density really effects cloth behavior. The rubberish look and feel can be improved upon by lowering the shear- as well as the fold resistance. Go for tenfold, so the default 50/5 becomes 5 / 0.5. In my tests (without vertex density change) the intended behavior was established. symmetrical, thick linen like with nice folds.

For proper wrinkles in the neck area it's recommended to tick the cloth-to-cloth collision detection setting (panel 1).

on the sleeveless T-shirt posted by ice-boy Dec 22nd I also see a 20mm vertex resolution and a body which is mainly diagonal tris, with some zigzag as well at the chest. Both make cotton weave behavior as intended for this T-shirt I hope, but the zigzag chest will behave different from the diagonal part, as in high vs low quality cloth.

My major concern however are the increasing vertex densities around the sleeves and toward the neck area. In contradiction to what one might believe, higher density does not mean: more solid behavior. Instead, higher density means: thinner cloth and more elasticity (unstable, bouncing, wobbling).

My advice: make it uniform, and if you can, preferably zigzag all over. If you want it to behave a bit thicker than dish-cloth or rag as for a high quality T-shirt, then you'd better lower (as in: halve or quarter) the mesh density. Then, by bringing down Fold- as well as Shear resistance to 0.5, you can do your girl-in-a-wet-Tshirt shot, even animated.

What I seem to be reading is: there is a direct relationship of mesh type and density to cloth type and settings. Indeed, in order to come up with appropriate settings, or variations on those settings, you must know the mesh type and density and intended cloth type. That is why the bottom of the skirt in my render turned to poo: the mesh wasn't designed to 1. accept those settings and 2. deform to that extreme. This is filling in some extremely important missing pages in the manual. Thank you, aRTBee!!

Ditto the thanks!

hi all,

just a few finishing posts on my latest findings, and Muppets Lab will close down for the moment. I am combining all the stuff in one comprehensive text, I'll tell you when it's there. And of course, I will continue to contribute in this and other Dynamic threads.

Notes on panel 3, Grouping

1. all vertices start in the default dynamic group, and when they are assigned to another group they get removed from the group they were in. So, all vertices are catered for, and each one is in one group at the time only.

Except for vertices in the Rigid Decorated Group, which are NOT removed from another group. Therefore, vertices can be in one group only PLUS in this Rigid group. Bug? Good Idea? I wouldn't know. I'll ask the SM people (next year).

1. panels 1, 2 and 3 present lists by an arrow and the selected item next to it. The list opens when clicking either. Except for panel 3, where the arrow is mute. So please click the item-name instead.

2. All [Edit ... Group ...] buttons open the editor pane. The top half is quite straightforward, I can recommend the Add Material option for multi-material cloth pieces. If have not tested the bottom half yet.

Please note that when you change a cloth item in panel 2 (or by selecting it in the preview window itself), this Group Editor pane does not follow!! It still points to the earlier cloth item, so you might end up looking at the wrong group. Just re-click one of those [Edit ... Group ...] buttons in panel 3 for a refresh.

Notes on panel 4, Parameters

Fold Resistance handles the forces that squeeze the fibres in the cloth, that is: in the plane / parallel to the cloth. Forces perpendicular to the cloth don't make folds, but bends. Effectively, increasing Fold Resistance makes the cloth thicker and more elastic. Just make order-of-maginitude steps through the range (0.5 - 5 - 50 - 500) to see meaningful effects.

Increasing Shear or/and Stretch Resistance makes the cloth thicker and less elastic. Stretch works in the horizontal/vertical directions as if you're pulling the fibres in the weave, Shear works in a diagonal way. Again, make order-of-magnitude steps to experience the effects.

Elasticity does not mean stretch but means: bouncing and wobbling during the animation. You need some to position the clothes better, but if it's too much the result needs a lot of frames to stabilize. Stretch damping reduces elasticity, but at serious values (0.1 and up) only. You can change it to correct for the elasticity-effects of changing Fold/Shear/Stretch resistance.

Increasing mesh density makes thinner cloth with higher elasticity. So when you mark the edges or shirts and dresses with high-vertex-density areas, the cloth will behave exactly the other way around as you intended.

Diagonal meshes hardly stretch but do shear extremely, and the elasticity in the direction of the diagonals is much less than in the other direction, of the missing diagonal. While wobbling a bit, the cloth tends to skew like the diagonals are pulling. Quads on the other hand tend to skew to the right, and fold a bit instead of wobbling, as if one side of the cloth is more stretchy than the other side. This might be due to the sim-algorithm. Just reduce the elasticity to reduce the effect.

Cloth density, measured as grams per cm2, does effect Fold/Shear/Stretch behaviour. It's not that easy to tell, but in the Towel and Flag tests higher density just makes gravity pull harder, and for instance Stretch increases like a square-root (quadruple density and the stretch doubles).
Cloth density however does have serious impact on the elastic behavior of the cloth, as if you're attaching extra weights to an rubber band. Assign density 0,5 to a cloth with all defaults, and you'll have a chord bungee-jumping all on its own weight only, not even close to coming to a rest at frame 10.000. Absolute fun for some animations, but a nightmare for decent clothing purposes.

I still have not found any effects of the cloth-self-friction parameter, static friction not only effects the cloth at stand-still but at low speeds also and does not follow any physics textbooks. The default 0.5 seems not too bad for cloth on skin, but smooth materials require very low settings (cloth on a hard=plastic mannequin might do 0.01). I provided a conversion table in an earlier post.

Dynamic friction is different from the physics textbooks but after all unit-conversions, the textbook values do well for parameter settings. The default linen on a table (the mannequin) goes well with the default 0.1 but cloth on skin does about 0.7. 
Friction is not effected by density, but friction tests require that the cloth is kept from deforming which demands higher values for fold/shear/stretch-resistance and stretch damping. Which are effected by cloth density. But that's for tests.

Air damping is measured in grams per cm2 per second, increasing it reduces the freedom to move wild and fast. Very high values, like 0.1 and up, will make underwater effects. At the same time, when your cloth is waving and swinging around, air-damping is the only force that stops it from doing so. Hence, when you reduce this parameter too much, the result has a very hard time coming at rest.

Cloth density has a direct inverse effect on this air damping: twice the density implies half the damping, as long as the movements are gravity driven. If the cloth moves are driven by the figure's moves, density will have no effect. 

Higher air-damping will show more sensitivity to Wind Force. Wind Force amplitude 1 means that a cloth at default parameters will hang at 45 degrees, so the side force equals the down force from gravity.

Gravity in cloth room follows the laws of physics. The constant reads 9.8 * 100 / (30*30) = 1,089 cm/frame^2 as from converting the Earth constant from m/s2 to cm and frames at 30 fps. The gravity script in the Poser Script menu is based at a different value and does not take additional effects like air damping into account, and therefor should not be used in conjunction with cloth room results.

That's it for 2010, have a Dynamic 2011 !

And to you, the SAME, aRTBee! All the best for 2011!!!

Since there seems to be a relationship between the mesh characteristics and its behaviour in the cloth room with different settings, it seems that it should be possible for the software to analyse the mesh, ask you to specify the cloth type you want to simulate, and then programmatically set it up for you. There could be an "advanced" tab where you could do the tweaking.

From Smith Micro's lack of interest in improving the cloth room interface, I conclude that they do not understand it very well themselves. It seems to me that they bought  the cloth simulator module and slapped on some kind of interface to control it. I don't think  there were many usability studies or even much testing of the module, That is happening now. Some signal or acknowledgement or appreciation for the work done by ArtBee and BagginsBill here, would go some way towards increasing my respect for the SM development team.

The documentation as well as the interface needs work. Robyn, I can't thank you enough for opening this up.

Just wanted to add my thanks to aRtBee for all the research and explanations, I'll be putting this to use very soon. Cheers and Happy New Year

Let us not be remiss in waiting for the Poser development team, and forget to thank aRtBee and bagginsBill for their work in the Cloth Room.

THANK YOU!

We all appreciate your efforts, and the efforts of others to investigate the Cloth Room. With enough input and sharing from talented people the mysteries of Poser's dynamic cloth may eventually be unraveled.

Sadly, neither aRtBee, nor bagginsBill share a public wishlist with us, so we can't easily offer them more than our thanks.

Happy New Year everybody!

lmk

Thank you, Nanette, for your kind words.   {{{hugs}}}

The really hard yards were done by aRTBee and BB. And I agree withlmk: I really wish these two had a public wishlist or something to show some tangible form of thanks ... this sort of detail work deserves more than just a nod. May 2011 be a particularly bright year for aRTBee and Bagginsbill, and, indeed, for all my lovely friends here on the Poser Forum...

(you guys now know what sort of social life I have, doncha?? :blink: fireworks?? we doan need no steenkin fireworks! :lol:)

Quote - > Quote - to my understanding, gary wants a script or something, and a list that has an entry for leather, and accompanying parameter settings. When you select that entry, the script loads the according parameters into the cloth room panel 4, for the selected cloth-object-group. PLus some ways to manage the list itself, or to make some library item from it.

This way he doesn't need a settings document or whatever, and retype the values over and over again. And ... the community can share list entries or so.

That must be do-able. Not for me, I'm not that good in poser scripts yet.

 

I have a script by PhilC. What I want is a simple drop down that allows me to save the sim settings or load a set I saved before as a feature to the next version of Poser. Using a Python script if you add a new one you have to reload poser to get it to show up in the script menu.

 

PhilC's script has a partner script by svdl. It allows users to save their Cloth Room settings and reload them via the Material Room. Its in the FreeStuff section here. Search for it and you'll find it. Otherwise, see my thread called " Dynamic Clothes Rule the World". I think I posted both links on page 1 or 2.

Revisiting this thread, only because I've finally had the "a-HA!" and want to share it. Well, it was given me by KobaltKween, when I finally started listening to her.

First, my views on re-vamping the interface hasn't changed. It still needs that doing.

However, thanks to KobaltKween, I sort-of got a bit of a magic bullet ... or better put: a workable starting point for any and all cloths you might want to clothify. I didn't have that: a good starting point. So, with KobaltKween's permission, I'd like to share this with you. This is the short, quick version.

When starting with dynamic cloth, you want to start easy. The first poses to try might be ones where the figure doesn't work the cloth too much.

--So, have your figure in a standing sort of pose, for a dress, for example. That way, the dress only collides with the figure and doesn't have a lot of bending and stretching to do.

--Make sure that the cloth does not intersect with the figure anywhere.

--Load your figure (say, V4) and pose her in either the default zeroed pose using the joint editor, or using whatever the cloth maker provided for zero-pose.

--Check that your figure isn't translated anywhere from 0. Also, to start with, all morphs need to be set to zero, including custom morphs. They do come back, including expressions, in the final frame.

Let's say we use the default 30 frames. Go to frame 30 and make it a key frame. Pose your figure.

• In frame 1, load the cloth to be clothified on your zeroed figure. There should be no poke-through anywhere.
• In Cloth room, set up a new sim. Click on New Simulation...
• For Simulation Name I tend to call it by what I'm clothifying: short version. The only other change I make in this dialogue is to tick the Cloth self-collision tickbox... and Ok.
• Cloth Objects, click on Clothify... oftentimes your item will be selected. Click Clothify.
• Colide Against: click on the Add/Remove button and select your (V4) figure. Set collision Offset to 0.25 and Collision Depth to 0.2. These settings have worked an absolute treat for me for the past few days for all sorts of dynamic, hybrid and even conforming cloth that I've clothified, so I share them with you (thank you AGAIN!, KobaltKween!). Please keep in mind your mileage may vary.
  Tick Ignore head, hand and feet collisions, and click okay.
• Click Calculate Simulation.

I've had reasonably good success using just this quick, simple approach. It is an excellent starting point for those who are - like me - affected by rubbish output time after time and who just need a starting point.

Here is an example of what is possible after only two days of mucking with this:

YAY! 

Laurie

THANKS, a good start "for Dummies" (again).
First Fit, then Pose, and Easy does it. Result looks good.

(Sorry, was a bit off (personal reasons, customers, ...) this half year but I'll be back from say June. I still owe you the Grand Tutorial On Anything Dynanic :blushing: )

No worries, aRtBee, no rush on that tutorial... as I play with things, so much is. Now that I've got a bit of a start, I'm unstoppable. Actually went and messed with Cupcake by EvilInnocence: welded all the parts together, and made it into a dynamic cloth, sort-of. Still working out how constrained groups are meant to work, but it's all good.

collison offset 0.24 and collision depth 0.2 is IMO to close to the skin. big chance for poke through.

everyone says this "There should be no poke-through anywhere."

• There should be no poke-through anywhere." but i have simulated with the breasts of v4 poking through the chest as she wears an M4 dynamic T, and the cloth always seems to find its way outwards
• Love esther

I haven't had any pokethrough except for the elbow in this, ice-boy:

...and quite frankly, that's what the morphing brush/tool is for. Both the jeans and the top are dynamic. The jeans had nil pokethrough, and the top; only at the elbow, and very minimally, at that.

What settings would you recommend, ice-boy?And where were your suggestions before now?

Don't forget, until now, in this thread or elsewhere, no one had a simple, quick, works-most-of -the-time solution for me. So, be careful... very careful! I'm going to stand by these settings quite staunchly: they work!

well the good thing about the cloth is it always tries to find the outside of the thing it collides with.  The bad news is that when you want to tuck a shirt in by putting toruses around the character's waist and setting collide against these, that the cloth still tries to find it's way to the surface of the thing it is colliding with.

Love esther

@esterau

my investigation into this is somewhere in this thread: when one of those distance parameters is so large that the sim can see the other side of the collision object, the cloth might flip to that side. This indeed will hamper tuncking shirts into trousers.

Also, when that distance is too low, the sim might not see the outside of the body at all. This might prevent resolving poke-throughs.

happy dressing!

collison offset and collison depth. which one is making the calculation slower?

hmm well maybe it sees the first layer of the torus as the thing that it wants to get past because I used a pretty fat torus.

As far as I have found:

step 1: each vertex is positioned according to physics and dynamics. Done for all vertices first.

step 2: if between the vertex position and a distance of colission-depth (looking 'down' only, not two-ways) the colission surface is met, the sim does something 'clever' (which might be wrong if the vertex is already inside and the opposite side of the object is in the range) to avoid massive calculations in the future. This step becomes pretty meaningless when collision depth < offset.

step 3: if between the vertex position and the colission offset the collossion surface is met or passed, the sim starts pushing the vertex in the other way. This is an iterative process effecting surrounding vertices as well, is limited in success, and rather calculation intensive when a limited success per ietration generates a need for a lot of iterative steps. Since this is done after step 2, the routine might work with the wrong notion of 'pushing outwards'.

This is what I recall from memory from my works 4 - 6 months ago, I haven't looked into my notes or into this thread. It's somewhere above in my remarks on those two distance-parameters.

Quote - collison offset and collison depth. which one is making the calculation slower?

Collision Offset is supposed to need more resources, so it may slow down calculations.

I believe, there are no general values for these two parameters.
They depend on the kind of cloth/fabric you are going for, what the final pose is going to be, etc.

And there are the two general scenarios...
Working on a still, where you can use the morph brush to correct some pokethrough
and animations, where it may be a little to much, correcting every nth frame.

Quote - Collision Offset is supposed to need more resources, so it may slow down calculations.

I believe, there are no general values for these two parameters.
They depend on the kind of cloth/fabric you are going for, what the final pose is going to be, etc.

And there are the two general scenarios...
Working on a still, where you can use the morph brush to correct some pokethrough
and animations, where it may be a little to much, correcting every nth frame.

When I started this thread, it was with the intent to establish a point to start from using the cloth room. I sought values that should generally work for most situations. I wanted to know what to generally tick, what to generally leave alone. As per the title, this is a "for Compleat Dummies" thread. The idea was to get those-that-know to sort-of throw in a few ideas so the rest of us could just dive in and have a clue what to do to get started.

What the thread produced was what we generally see when there's any discussion on dynamic cloth: "it depends" and a lot of conflicting concepts. The ensuing discussion gave the impression that dynamic cloth in Poser was impossibly difficult and you needed a master's degree in Physics to get a grip on it. Whilst the data presented was probably highly accurate, carefully researched information, to this newbie it was dishearteningly, discouragingly confusing and it didn't address the question on how to get started.

Well, the settings I gave above are good starting points for stills, which is what I do, for a wide variety of cloth types, including true dynamic cloth, hybrid cloth and even conforming cloth I want to make do dynamics. This works for mostly everything, detracting comments aside.

So, let's restart this discussion with this question (and bring the focus back on what the original intent of the thread was about: simplifying dynamics for all Poser users): what do you generally use for stills?

Quote - **...**Well, the settings I gave above are good starting points for stills, which is what I do, for a wide variety of cloth types, including true dynamic cloth, hybrid cloth and even conforming cloth I want to make do dynamics. This works for mostly everything, detracting comments aside.

So, let's restart this discussion with this question (and bring the focus back on what the original intent of the thread was about: simplifying dynamics for all Poser users): what do you generally use for stills?

Sorry! It wasn't my intention to imply, that your starting points are not valid!
Usually, I do a test sim using Posers default values and take it from there.

Okay, that's a starting point: so did I. Didn't have much success with those default settings, did you? What did you usually end up with (in terms of settings), msg?