ncloth clothes!

rigth like i mentioned before we are planning on using ncloth on our characters.

i have only ever used ncloth for small tests in the past just to get a brief idea of how it works.
so i found a good tutorial. it comes with the autodesk package. you can find it in the help/tutorial section. then they supply the scene files so you have everything they have so you follow the tutorial exactly.

with the dress they give you, you have to line it up with the body. then connect the dress vertexes to the shoulders of the character. make the dress ncloth and make the character model a passive collider so that the cloth reacts to the characters movements.

here are the two videos i got at the end of my experiments.



and now for te walking one.



this worked pretty well as you can see. i plan on implementing these same techniques when it comes to working on the characters on our film.

i now just need to wait for Carlos to finish the models and get the clothes themselves modelled.

next i plan on using matchmover to practice some tracking. i have never used match mover before but hopefully it shouldnt be much different to after effects, or atleast the techniques you need to use.

technical work

so there are a couple of things i need to brush up for this project. One thing is my tracking skills, this is for placing the characters in scene and making sure they stay where they are meant to be if the camera moves. also to keep the tree in place.

the other thing is to build upon my skills in ncloth. We plan on using ncloth for the clothes on our characters. i have used ncloth briefly in tests in the past just for fun etc, just to see how the basics work.
here's an example.



This is very basic ncloth. i will need to work out how to make it work with the passive colliders (the objects that react with the cloth) when they are animated and try to keep the clothes connected to character.

model sheets

here are the finished sheets of the characters so Carlos can model from them.

man front



man side



girl front



girl side

tree trunk

i have decided to use maya to make the base mesh then go into more detail with zbrush.



this is the most basic mesh i then just moved a view vertexes to give it basic shape, then it was time for zBrush.




i then used a couple of different brushes to cut some shape into the trunk. and add texture.



i found a texture online and decided for now to add it to the tree to get an idea of what it could look like once i add the final texture.
using paint effects i managed to create the branches and leaves.

for now this is the final tree.



it's not quite there yet, i think i'm going to have to sit down and think about the texture and how i'm going to make this look like it should. obviously its going to have a lot to do with the compositing and lighting.