dForce clothing falling through surfaces
RenderPretender
Posts: 1,041
in The Commons
I have a character wearing a long flannel shirt, sitting on a bench. Try as I might - planes, dForce modifiers, etc. - the tail of the shirt insists upon falling through (ignoring) the bench. I have this issue ALL the time, so either I'm doing something wrong, or this is a persistent characteristic of the tool. Any ideas on how to put this frustrating limitation to bed?
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Comments
First thing to check is in Properties, under Display, whether Visibile in Simulation somehow got set to Off.
Also make sure that the dForce item is above what it is supposed to collide with at the start of the simulation.
See that's always puzzled me. If I have the character posed as I like her on the bench, and the shirt tail is below the bench, how do I remedy that? I even tried starting from a memorized (default) pose, which placed the shirt above the bench, and it didn't help at all.
Are you clicking on "Simulate" or "Simulate Selected"? If the later, then make sure the bench (and anything else it needs to collide with) are also selected.
I do not know which clothing or pose you're using, but I generally always use animated timeline, as you then can do corrective actions along the timeline.
If she is sitting on a bench, then maybe put her in sitting pose on frame 10, and then for frame 20 move the bench in under her.
And if the clothing can get trapped between the character and the bench, you must leave a little gap for the clothing to move. Elsewise you will get weird effects.
I'm clicking the blue Simulate button. I don't see any other option. The bench is a static surface with Visible in Simulation on. Selecting the shirt and bench and clicking Simulate Selected actually made it worse somehow. I think I'll end up using a deformer and camera angle fake because this just isn't practical in terms of workflow.
Another thing you can try is to lay a plane primitive on the bench, then resize it so it fits exactly on top, and see if the clothing will collide with that. The plane can be hidden at render time. Some objects don't make good colliders for some reason
Yup, tried that too. The shirt completely ignores the plane.
If the dForce object has intersected with the object, collision-detection becomes moot. If you're serious about learning to use dForce with poses, this video by @esha provides a lot of useful information.
Does any part of the shirt intersect with the bench or plane at the start of the simulation?, that can cause issues in some cases.
Yes, and as the above poster suggests, that is likely the issue. I just don't know how to avoid that, especially since even starting from the memorized (default) pose, thereby removing the intersection, does not help at all.
It's possible the bench has very few vertices (which are what dForce considers in its calculations). Even with vertices at just the corners it should work but I've seen cases where you get the penetration you describe. You could try a primitive plane (from main menu Create/New Primitive) with 40 divisions and put on top of the bench. Run the simulation with the plane visible (it does not need a dForce modifier). You can then hide the plane afterwards.
Create a cube. Scale it so it can properly collide with all of the shirt. Move it so it is well below your character. Move to frame ten in your timeline and move the cube, so it is in position where your character sits on it and make sure it is keyframed. Now run a simulation.
Nope, no joy. I think I'm going to have to abandon this garment for this scene.
It may see the plane now that I moved the plane slightly below the garment's lowest point and hid the bench temporarily. I'm trying to use the plane to trick the garment into cooperating somewhat, then make the bench visible. The result is still not at all acceptable.
I have this problem a lot and it is a headache mainly because I really don't want to use animated simulations because the timeline gets saved with the scene and I don't want that (for reasons I have discussed in other threads). So there are a couple of things to look at. Firstly, if you use a plane, do you divide it sufficiently? I usually give it more than 100 divisions so that the cloth does not fall through the mesh. Also, if the memorized pose does not remove the figure from the intersecting surface, you could move the figure away a little and memorize that pose. The problem there is that Memorize Pose does not do what it says. It does not memorize the figure translations so you have to use hip translations which can, in itself, cause problems. This whole area of dForce is badly executed, IMHO. I long for the day when we can pull the cloth around obstacles while the simulation is running, as is possible in other cloth sims.
Thank you... I feel that way as well! I'm currently attempting a fake by manipulating the thigh bones of the garment, out of sheer frustration. I remain gobsmacked that dForce developers seem satisfied with what more than a few users seem to have identified as an obvious headache. All of the prospective solutions seem more like accommodations of an underperforming tool, however resourceful they might be.
I had a fit getting here, but I think it works in this shot. There's some camera foolery and garment bone dial twisting to compensate for dForce's recalcitrance. I think this aspect of dForce should be far easier, more intuitive, and less time intensive than it is. Still, at least I can use the shot.