Creating cloth

In this tutorial you will learn how to create/change cloth. You will also learn how to use XStoryPlayer for storing cloth states.

Steps

1. Copy the /sources/scenes for this tutorial from the 'Tutorial resource pack' to the /pack/pack_adbucted/sources directory.
   The files contains the textures and maya cloth meshes for the Saiko (Alien) character.
   Open the body.ma file in Maya. Also open the body.ini file in a text editor.
   
2. A cloth needs two meshes to work. A bind-mesh that contains the actual pattern of the cloth. If we change this mesh the shape of the cloth is changed.
   Then there is also a render-mesh that is used for rendering the cloth. It has a higher sub-division level for more detail.
   The dress for example has bind-mesh "dressBindShape" and render-mesh "dressShape".
   The render-mesh needs to be positioned around the character so it does not intersect.
3. In this tutorial we want to change the shape of the dress a bit. We can use the bind-mesh for that.
   Change the "dressBindShape" so it looks somewhat like this:
   
   Save the body.ma file. Add the maya convert code to the start.ini of the filemaker:
   

   Maya scene
   {
     src_path = "[SOURCES]";
     run_path = "[RUNTIME]";
    
     in_file  = "[SOURCES]scenes/character6_cloth/body.ma";
   }

   Run the filemaker and the new cloth objects should be created in the /scenes/character6 directory.

4. We can use XStoryPlayer to view and re-position the newly created dress.
   Edit the settings.ini like this:
   

   runtime
   {
     start_mode   = TEST; // Start test mode of XStoryPlayer
    
     debug_sys    = BASIC;
     debug_render = NONE;
     debug_phys   = NONE;
     debug_brain  = ENABLED;
    
     pack2        = "pack/pack_abducted"; // Use this directory as source as well
    
     save_key     = "";
   }

   Now edit the ./testini/run.ini to this:

   settings
   {
     reset     = true;
    
     mode      = CLOTH; // Start cloth position mode
    
     name      = "alien";             // Name of character
     name_obj  = "scenes/character6"; // File location of character
    
     waypoint  = "wpIdentity"; // Location in scene where to place character
    
     offset_y  = 0.0; // Offset in scene
     move_y    = 0.0; // Move amount during cloth fitting
    
     //cloth_movie = "stand_0"; // Cloth state used to init cloth
     pose_type   = STAND;       // Pose we like to end with
    
     //cloth0    = "bra";     // Cloth object 0
     //cloth1    = "panty";   // Cloth object 1
     cloth2    = "dress";   // Cloth object 2
    
     scene_file     = "scenes/test/scene.scn"; // The scene we use for testing
     scene_waypoint = "waypoint"; // The waypoint we want to start at
   }

   Now run XStoryPlayer again. You should see the character taking on the stand pose. After a while the cloth is fitted like this: