Tutorial

In this tutorial we will go over the steps to create this simple cloth animation:



Animating a cloth takes 3 steps:
- Create the cloth
- Assign forces
- Set up collisions

First create a 1mx1m plane in the Modeler. Also create a weight map containing the two corners of the plane (we will hang the cloth on these corners).
Then load this plane in Lightwave.

Now, apply the syCloth displacement on the plane:


Click on syCloth, you will have the following panel:



In the "Forces" tab, click on "Add Forces" and select "Gravity".

Now if you press the play button, you will see the plane falling.
We need now to fix the corners:
Add a second force "Nail".



In the control panel of the nail, click on the "Fix" field, and select the weight map you created with the two corners.
Now play the animation.

You can control the behavior of the cloth by changing its properties:
Click on "Edit Force" and select "property". Set the following values:



Also edit the gravity and set Gravity Y to -0.017.
And finally edit the damp and set it to 0.01.


In the Modeler, create another object, for instance a torus.
Load this object in Lightwave, and position it under the plane..
In the syCloth panel, click on "Add Force" and select "Collide Mesh".
In the "Collide Mesh" panel, set the "Object" field to the torus.
Play the animation: now the plane collides on the torus.


The process to animate a t-shirt is exactly the same:



You can add pins to attach some vertices of the cloth to the body (like for a belt).

The polygons on the cloth can have any number of sides, but best results are achieved with quandrangles (imagine the yarns of a fabric).
On a t-shirt, the edges can be oriented horizontally/vertically, or diagonally. The results will be different, because the springs on the cloth are defined from the faces.

The size of the faces has an influence on the simulation: for a leather jacket use bigger faces than for a silk dress. The size of the faces is somehow related to the size of the wrinkles on the fabric.

© Syflex LLC