How to create stiff fabric drape with Dforce

Cyrinadia

I have read RGcincy's dforce tutorial and experimented to try and find how to make a plane drape a little more stiffly, without hovering, like a tarp over a crate or cargo. I've followed a few of the numbers from the tute page, but it still sits like a fine, thin cloth.

Should I use a cube with it's height set real low? What numbers are ideal or close to ideal? Thanks!

*Trying a cube with .1% height and 300 divisions. Lots of processing happening now.

** I regret the cube. Spring Node, lots of numbers, still loading at 35%, no option to cancel. What have I done??

*** Some time later, and the sim finally happens.. my cube is gone.

fred9803

Are you trying to drape a plane or a cube? or a plane over a cube?

Have a squiz half way down page 34 of this thread that shows how the setting affect draping.

Richard Haseltine

Cyrinadia said:

I have read RGcincy's dforce tutorial and experimented to try and find how to make a plane drape a little more stiffly, without hovering, like a tarp over a crate or cargo. I've followed a few of the numbers from the tute page, but it still sits like a fine, thin cloth.

Should I use a cube with it's height set real low? What numbers are ideal or close to ideal? Thanks!

*Trying a cube with .1% height and 300 divisions. Lots of processing happening now.

** I regret the cube. Spring Node, lots of numbers, still loading at 35%, no option to cancel. What have I done??

*** Some time later, and the sim finally happens.. my cube is gone.

Your cube has a lot of polygons, and by scaling it down on one axis all the verticale dges arounbd the sides are shorter than the dynamic offset value, which dForce teats as a minimum edge length. reporting those takes a long time, and isn't cancellable; then the fight between rest length and minimum length keeps pumping energy into the simulation, making it impossible for the process to diffuse out and so causing the emsh to explode/fly off.

Using a lower-resolution model can help. You can also make the stiffnesses higher, but you will then need to adjust the iteration settings to allow the simulation to work without exploding.

Cyrinadia

fred9803 said:

Are you trying to drape a plane or a cube? or a plane over a cube?

Have a squiz half way down page 34 of this thread that shows how the setting affect draping.

I was using a plane at first, but it looks too.. drapey. I thought a cube might help. I will have to try what Richard suggested. I'm draping over a kitbashed frame to make a kind of hobo tent. 

Cyrinadia

 

Using a lower-resolution model can help. You can also make the stiffnesses higher, but you will then need to adjust the iteration settings to allow the simulation to work without exploding.

Thanks Richard, I shall try that. And for my next question, where do I find these values (stiffness) you mentioned? I have the simulation tab, and I have dynamic clothing tab. The dynamic clothing tab hasn't worked for me as it says to me often: 'There is no clothing'. I have the plane with it's dforce modifier applied and selected, it still says I have no clothing items. Fair, I suppose, it is just a plane after all. What am I doing wrong or what have I missed?

Cyrinadia

So after some reading in the page that Fred mentioned, I did find the values.. in Surfaces?? Ok... surfaces it is then lol

MelanieL

Cyrinadia said:

 

Using a lower-resolution model can help. You can also make the stiffnesses higher, but you will then need to adjust the iteration settings to allow the simulation to work without exploding.

Thanks Richard, I shall try that. And for my next question, where do I find these values (stiffness) you mentioned? I have the simulation tab, and I have dynamic clothing tab. The dynamic clothing tab hasn't worked for me as it says to me often: 'There is no clothing'. I have the plane with it's dforce modifier applied and selected, it still says I have no clothing items. Fair, I suppose, it is just a plane after all. What am I doing wrong or what have I missed?

The Dynamic Clothing tab is for Optitex dynamic items (which are on sale in the store) not for dForce items. The Optitex system is much older than dForce and (I suspect) little used now we have dForce. You only need the Surfaces tab and the Simulation tab for dForce.

onix

dForce does not allow anything that has reasonable stiffness as mesh will always explode during simulation

the only working solution to increase stiffness is to reduce vertex count if this is some primitive( like a plane) that's no problem, just make create it with desired polygon count otherwise maybe you can use a decimator plugin or some 3d modeling software to rebuild mesh.

 

Also, you can drop 2 planes onto each other or if you want to keep some geometry piece rigid you can combine it with a single polygon planes