soulhuntre opened this issue on Oct 27, 2001 ยท 8 posts
jbrugion posted Sat, 27 October 2001 at 8:25 PM
Theoretically doable. Actually built some code like that as part the Morph Mapper code to try and fix some pokethrough issues. I have since fixed most of the underlying problems and turned that code off. I refer to this method as "HAT" for "Height Above Terrain" which is a common problem I run into in my day job trying to keep airplanes ABOVE the terrain mesh and tanks ON the terrain. Two problems with HAT on the clothing: First problem is CPU time. I believe that I can make my algorithm much quicker but I haven't had time yet to really profile and optimize it as I am currently going from one production project to another. If I can't speed up the algorithm I might try making a python extension dll (imagine sound of me sticking my hand into a blender). That would be faster but until I get a Mac it would leave the non-PC users high and dry. Second Problem: Getting it to look good versus mathematically correct. It may be correct, ie hold clothing a certain distance away, but may not look right. Example: any dress or skirt. Gravity rears it's ugly head very quickly. There are solutions to this problem but they start getting into more intensive algorithms which run you back into problem 1 of CPU time. I have been looking at some more advanced clothing handling algorithms. I am looking for a good tradeoff point between better improved clothing and CPU-time. There has been a lot of research and progress in this field over the last couple of years. I guess a good question for users is how long are they willing to wait for their CPU to crank out really good clothing effects?