Physics for a trench coat

Marco's idea is very interesting, but sounds very difficult to impliment. I'd like to see it done though.

I animated a dress using Lightwave's motion dynamics then exported as point animation. Even then, it is very hard getting it so that the material stays out of the rest of the model.

MED doesn't have motion dynamics, so you'll have to look around for an application that will do the job for you.

It would be very nice if Game Studio had motion dynamics built into it. Maybe something to suggest for Engine Future?

Do you think that Newton physics would do it?

My guess is no. It's a pretty challenging problem you are addressing.

How about just animating the Model of the tail of the trench coat, blowing in the "wind" (giving it a long sequence so it doesn't look looped in the game), then attach it to the body of your player (I'm no good at scripting but) somehow make it so that when you move foward to top of the tail peice is hinged to the player thus making the bottom of the coat slightly flare back in movement. You could even use a hinge from newton.

Absolutly. Then the cape is just an animated model and you can do whatever you want.
It's tieiing in real time physics that presents massive problems

This probably won't help you out much, but here is a link of a cloth simulation demo from some website I found quite a while back. Way too hard for me to learn/do. But the demos are fun to look at. http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Why not assume there is no wind? Then the cape will only move when the player moves. This could be a lot easier to set up then the alternative. You're player will run forwards, turn, and stop. Those aren't that hard to set up animations for as long you're going to use the same animation over and over for these states.

Although, I am assuming you've got access to a cloth simulator, which is a pretty good sized assumption.

if you already go this far, then you could add some slight sin/cos movements to the trenchcoats vertices. this would add slight windy movement

Yeah, that could look rather pretty.

How do you use the .dat file that comes with the cloth physics demos?

I haven't been able to find any modeling or animation software for lower budgets that is capable of soft body dynamics.

Even if you do find one that you can afford, I can tell you from experience that animating cloth and stopping it from going into the model's body is quite a task. One that should keep you fixed to your monitor for a few days at least.

You could also try bone animation, but it won't look as good, and pretty hard to make any semblence of real motion.

Using 3dgs physics objects to control the position of vertices in a cloth model sounds like one hell of a task. I've never heard of such a thing ever being attempted, so if you are game, then I'd like to hear how you go.

I understand your frustration, there is no easy solution. I think your best bet is to get access to a high end modeling program and using its motion dynamics capabilities.

Just stick your model in the simulation when using a cloth simulator. Then you animate the cloth while the model is going through it's animation.

Bring the whole object into MED as a vertex animation and it should look right. Keeping the cloth out of the model isn't difficult in XSI. That's the only cloth simulator I have access to. (besides the one the comes with truespace. But I'm not going to load that one up right now.) On second thought I also have poser 5 with cloth simulation. It's an ok animation system, but not as good as the XSI cloth animation system.

I agree that a realtime cloth animation system would be really cool to use in a game. But this is the best that I can think of for the time being.

Did anyone try the cloth simulation demo I posted, it's real time, complex, and has great colision detection. I asume conitec could add something like it the 3dgs, most likey would end up a PRO only feature.

I didn't know you posted a real time cloth simulator. Where can I take a look at it?

Hope this link works, it's the copied URL for where you select a server for downloading it. http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/apocalyx/ClothDemo_0.5.0_WIN-030412.zip?download

Its very cool the cloth simlutator.. but how can this be applyed to 3dGS?

Request it as a feature and give conitec a link to the demo.

If you are willing to drop a couple thousand on maya 6 it now renders cloth and hair and if im reading te help file on it correctly maya will even add collision detection to cloth and hair, so this would be a semi fix the coat would bounce off the characters legs and feets as he runs around giving it movement.

I reackon it can be easily done. Check this thread:

http://www.conitecserver.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=498414&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#498414

Use the same concept. You will just move the verticies in real time, based on the movement of the top verticies of the cape. Make sure you check out DooeyJo's post in that thread.