Smoothing modifier is too smooth

AdVictoriam01

Hello,
I'm new to this whole thing and already got a question that google refuses to answer to me. So here is my noob question:
I got a person who is wearing a gladius on it's back, covered by clothing. To achieve this, I put (transformed) the sword slightly into the person, added it as a part of the person and used the smoothing/collision modifier of the clothing to stretch it over the sword. This worked fine so far, the cloth is covering the whole sword. But now you can barely see the shape of it anymore, as it is just a amorph mass in lenghty form covered by cloth. Thin cloth, which looks quite weird. How do I get a tighter fit on smoothing modifiers?

Richard Haseltine

You could try adjusting the number of iterations, and also try using Generic insdtead of Base Shape matching - that controls whether the model tries to go back to its initial form, or just smooths out its current state. An alternative might be to try dForce, if the area in question will work without exploding (you could animate the gladius from inside the figure to its correct postion - though if parts of the outfit are uncooperative you may need to exclude them with a weight map or surface groups).