Cloth Simulation Using XSI and Marvelous Designer

[Sue.Sauer]

Hey everybody!
Did some cool cloth simulation last week, check it out on my blog http://www.suesauer.blogspot.com/2014/0 ... elous.html
or on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/98906278 and http://vimeo.com/98906279





have a great day

Moderator edit: embedded the videos - HB

[owei]

Hey!
Looking great! Would be cool if you could give some insights about the workflow.. ;)
Thanks!

cheers,
oli

[Sue.Sauer]

A lot of mdd and obj importing and exporting...

Animation/rigging is done in xsi. Then the characters are exported and imported into marvelous as "Avatars"
Clothing is made in Marvelous, stitched together,draped in a t-position(like they did in the hobbithttp://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2013 ... esigner-2/) and then simed per shot as needed.
After all that it gets re-imported into softimage(obj and mdd) where it gets tweaked, smoothed and so on.

hope that helps

[druitre]

Looking good! (Cool animation too, your work?) Can you say something about Marvelous, what do you think about it and what's it like for XSI workflow? Ah, I see your second post crossed my questions - well, what I'm curious about is stability/predictability of simming in Marvelous. Is it easy to tweak settings, rerun sims, get a desired result without too much frustration?

thanks, Jasper

[Sue.Sauer]

hey Jasper,

The animation was done by my colleague Samantha(also working at Blackginger).
I feel that compared to syflex/n-cloth and so on, marvelous has always given me better results. It is so stable that I leave it and go home at night... If you get my meaning. The settings are simple enough, and once you get your mind around the stitching and layering its super simple to tweak.
The biggest difference between marvelous and other 3d programs is that marvelous is a "clothing" program not a "cloth" program, you can make a flag in marvelous, but it is easier in syflex/ICE verlet. You can control the wind and so on, in marvelous it gets really tricky to do stuff like that.
Plus in marvelous your uv set is fixed to your geometry, so you cant just scale up your uvs.

anyway

[rray]

Very nicely done, such delightful dancers
Reminds me I wanted to share some compounds for MD/ICE workflow

[Sue.Sauer]

Yes please, do share

[Hirazi Blue]

@rray - Anything else you need reminding of?

[rray]

Some compounds below for binding meshes (like buttons, belts) to mdd anims from Marvelous Designer (/all other kind of anims fwiw)

compounds are meant for 4 different uses
#1: deform each point (= for soft things)
#2: deform each island (for rigid things like buttons)
#3: deform a pointcloud with shape instances (for a huge number of rigid objects.. e.g.chainmail)
#4: modeling details/cloth replacements in uv space (which is sometimes useful)

How to use #1 - this works best for soft items like a belt, replacement cloth. Rigid items like buttons will get bent!
------------------
-in Marvelous, export obj and mdd as single object/unwelded with unified UV coordinates scale 0.1
-import obj and apply mdd
-model something like a belt directly around the waist
-apply "store locations" compound to the belt, plug the md mesh into its Geo port
-Freeze the belt - the pre computed ICE attributes are kept (could also use sim stack instead)
-apply "deform by locations" compound to the belt

How to use #2 -best for rigid things like buttons
-------------
- same workflow as #1 just apply "initialize island lookup" before the "store locations"

How to use #3
-----------
- same again but use point cloud instead of mesh and check "store instance rotations" in the "store locations" compound as well as "rotate instances" in the "deform by locations" compound.

#4
--
- same... just use "morph to uv" compound on the MD mesh instead of applying the mdd
- (use steps from #1,#2 or #3)
- mute "morph to uv" after modeling and binding is done, then apply the mdd

just a quick writeup... don't hesitated asking questions about the compounds

[Sue.Sauer]

OOOOO Amazing will have a look see

[rray]

That zip is missing a compound (embedded) to work, will post that one tonight
_________
edit it's up now( post above)

[angus_davidson]

When I first saw the post on Sues Blog about the animation project of the dance

http://suesauer.blogspot.com/2013/04/lindy-hop.html

I thought Bloody hell if that was given to our students their heads would explode.

Her blog is a treasure trove of interesting stuff , well worth a look.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, a well-executed and thus well-timed dance routine should probably be considered the true test of an animator's worth. It's the complete package of movement, timing and sound. That's why I missed the soundtrack to the OP so much. A dance quite obviously needs music to be able to adequately judge it as an animation... (But I am aware this was more about the simulation, not so much about the animation.)

[Sue.Sauer]

Not really sure I can get my hands on the music yet. Still being edited.

[Hirazi Blue]

Hmm, I'll shut up about it (for) now,then,
although I obviously stand by my statement that you'd need the audio to correctly judge the dance (but not so much the simulation, it's true)...

[FXDude]

Well, a well-executed and thus well-timed dance routine should probably be considered the true test of an animator's worth. It's the complete package of movement, timing and sound. That's why I missed the soundtrack to the OP so much. A dance quite obviously needs music to be able to adequately judge it as an animation... (But I am aware this was more about the simulation, not so much about the animation.)

Indeed the cloth is great, and the char. anim is absolutely exquisite! Kudois to your friend