Using Cloth with Bipeds

Using Cloth with Bipeds

Creating Pleats

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Hair and Cloth Tutorials > Cloth > Using Cloth with Bipeds > 

Clothe a Biped

To accomplish our task, we must slow down the character’s pose. The idea here is that motion-capture data imported into both products will position a character at frame 0, which can cause problems for Cloth because it wants to simulate over at least 30 to 90 frames before motion begins, generally in a neutral pose.

Clothe an animated biped:

1. Load tutorial_7.max from your \tutorials\cloth folder.

   This scene has a biped standing in the “Da Vinci” pose.

   

   Biped in Da Vinci pose

2. Select all the biped parts and then go to the Motion panel.
3. On the Copy/Paste rollout, click Copy Posture.

   Now this posture is saved for you to get later.

4. On the Motion Capture rollout, click Load Motion Capture File, and then load the file backkick.bip from your \tutorials\cloth folder. Click OK through the dialogs that follow, accepting the default settings.
5. Open Track View and choose Mode > Dope Sheet. Resize the Track View window until you can see all of the biped keys, then drag a rectangle to select all these keys. Drag the keys 30 frames to the right (while you drag, a tooltip shows an Offset value that you can watch).

   This will give you 30 frames of transition between the copied pose and the first motion-capture frame.

6. Close the Track View - Dope Sheet window.
7. At frame 0, on the Motion Panel > Copy/Paste rollout, click Paste Posture.
8. On the Key Info rollout, click Set Key.

   Now when you scrub the time slider your animation should show a smooth transition between the Da Vinci pose and the first frame of the motion capture.

9. Right-click a viewport and choose Unhide All to unhide the Shirt object.
10. Select the Shirt object and then go to the Modify panel. In the Cloth modifier’s Object rollout > Simulation group, click Simulate to begin deforming the shirt. At frame 30, press ESC to halt the simulation (watch the progress dialog or the time slider).
11. At frame 30, in the Selected Object Manip group, click Set Initial State.

    This sets the initial state of the shirt to be in sync with the first frame of the motion capture. Because Cloth requires some pre-roll for the simulation, it provides you with the tools needed to copy the cloth at any stage back to frame 0.

12. Next, go to frame 0 and click Truncate Simulation.

    This removes the simulation after frame 0.

13. Save the scene as my_clothed_biped.max.
14. Choose File > New, and on the New Scene options dialog, choose Keep Objects And Hierarchy.

    This removes all animation from the scene.

15. Import the motion capture file again. At frame 0, the cloth is in synch with the biped. From this point on, you can animate the cloth to follow the biped’s motion.

    This tutorial gave you a method for "staging" your Cloth simulation.