Creating Stage Curtains

[Adam Trachtenberg]

To be honest, I think this is a bridge too far for Cinema’s cloth engine, although there are things you could do to improve it:

* in the cloth>expert tab, increase sub-sampling to at least six;
* use higher density mesh for the curtain (there aren’t enough polygons to create the necessary folds;
* increase the collision distances in the expert tab (try 3,2,1);
* turn on self repulsion in forces to help out the self collision;
* adjust the start position of the torus (it’s intersecting the curtain even before the simulation starts);
* keyframe off self collision after the curtain has been pulled to reduce jittering.

Even with all that, this is a very tough case for any cloth simulation — where you force multiple folds of cloth together.

[John Cuevas]

Adam, thank you for taking the time to look at my project. At this point what would be the quickest way to create a hihger density mesh for the curtain? Do I need to start over by creating a new plane and increasing the segments before making it an editable object or is the better method to accomplishing this at this point?

Also, if you don’t mind, in the file you created, whats causes your curtain to fold so nicely, is it having a lot more polygons to start?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Hi John,

I think the quickest way to increase the poly count would be to disable the cloth tag (uncheck use cloth engine) and then use the Mesh>Commands>Subdivide function. Then re-enable the cloth tag and reset your belt points.

I think my original file folded better simply because it was a much simpler animation — without the belt gathering the curtain in the middle.

[Brian Jones]

some settings changes and a vertex map to make the curtain have more mass at the bottom

6172_curtaindraw.c4d.zip

[John Cuevas]

Brian, I did a show help on the downUp (Base)tags you created, but C4D came back with “There is no online help available for this function.” If you don’t mind, could you explain what you did there?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Adam and Brian.

Thank you both for helping me out on this, never would of come close to getting the physics to be nearly this good without your help and learned a few new things this week—the jump from 2.5d to 3D is pretty big.

Thanks again.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

No problemo. Lots to learn.

The tag Brian used is a vertex map tag (he just renamed it). You can create them by going into points mode, and using the selection tool. One of the options for the tool is vertex map painting. Vmaps are useful for lots of things.

[Brian Jones]

as Adam said, just renamed, I was trying out two vertex tags – one with more weight on the top and one with weighting on the bottom (both gradients) I just renamed them so I could easily tell which I was using in the Mass portion of the Cloth Tags settings. I wasn’t sure if weighting it like a real curtain (weights on the bottom) or removing mass from the bottom so it would not drag behind with inertia so much was better. Light mass on the bottom worked ok but heavy mass on the bottom was better, particularly with less Stiffness so it would drop quicker from the folding that occurs during the opening sequence, and increased Flexion – which in spite of it’s name is really a form of stiffness – to make it behave better when the torus moves it. I did try using the vertex maps in the Stiffness setting to see if changing the stiffness top to bottom helped but like the Mass I was getting better results with something closer to a real curtain (constant stiffness). I didn’t tweak it as much as possible it’s very likely possible to get better results by tweaking the stiffness/flexion/vertex maps