Requirements
- Need a way to model fabrics in an easier way.
- Need a realistic cloth modelling method that isn't going to need a lot of polygons in order to work
- Need a method of creating a realistic blanket model to go with the new bed models in our game
Research
- Initial research involved searching to find out if there was a way of simulating cloth in Autodesk Maya to make a realistic blanket for our bed model in our game.
- Found a tool called nCloth, and an article that went through its fundamentals and how to use the tool.
- The article, from PluralSight, explained how nCloth can be used to simulate cloth and other effects:
'With Maya's nCloth you're able to create a convincing cloth simulation with any polygon mesh in a very short amount of time.' - Lines 2-3.
'Despite it's name, nCloth isn't only for simulating clothing. You can use it for things like water balloons or shattering surfaces.' - What is nCloth? Lines 3-4.
- The article also went through an example of using nCloth to create a water balloon, which also introduces passive colliders - which are needed in order to simulate the nCloth properly.
'you'll notice the sphere will start to fall, but it falls straight through the ground plane! That's because we haven't made the polygon plane into a collidable object yet. ' - Setting up a Basic nCloth Simulation, Lines 18-20.
- Decided to attempt the same process, this time with a plane to act as a blanket, along with a cuboid that would be a passive collider.
Research Sources:
Maya tutorial: Understanding and creating NCLOTH simulations (2017) Pluralsight. Available at: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/tutorials/understanding-creating-ncloth-simulations-maya (Accessed: February 8, 2023).
Implementation
- Created a mattress shape and a plane that would act as the blanket in the simulation.
- Added extra subdivsions to the blanket plane to have more polygons to work with.
- Set the frames used to 1000 to give the nCloth more time to simulate.
- Set up the blanket as the nCloth and the mattress as the passive collider.
Analysis
- Successfully found a way to create realistic cloth/fabric in Maya in a useful and quick way.
- Through adding extra subdivisions, I was able to find out about how many extra polygons were needed in a plane in order to create a blanket (didn't add too many extra subdivisions and so didn't need too many polygons to get the end result).
- Was satisfied with the quality of the resulting blanket, and was happy to present it to the team as a model to be used in the game.