J.

Adrian Herbez
purplestatic@yahoo.com

Using Maya Cloth

IMPORTANT: to display the cloth command set, you must bring up the hotbox, go to hotbox controls,
and select show cloth menus

Making Cloth Objects

Cloth in Maya can be created in one of two ways:

1) creating a cloth object from a polygonal or NURBS surface (Cloth->Create Cloth Object)
2) by making "panels" from NURBS curves, and building them into "garments"

It's almost always better to create panels, since the tesselation is less uniform and therefore less likely to create noticeable
artifacts.

When creating curves to construct panels, the overall shape must:

1) be made up of two or more curves- usually more
2) enclose an area
3) have coinciding endpoints (form a closed loop)
4) lie on a single plane (all curves must be coplanar)

This can be a little tricky, but can be handled by turning on "snap to curves", and click-dragging to the endpoint of the
previous curve when creating a new one. Hitting the "Y" key instead of Enter from within the curve creation tools will
complete the current curve but keep you in curve-creation mode.

A set of curves should be created for each piece of a cloth object- a shirt, for example, would most likely be made of 6 sets
of curves:
- a set each for the front and back chest sections (2)
- a set for the front and back of each sleeve (4)

Once a set of curves is created, they are made into a panel via Cloth->Create Panel. A panel is created for each set of
closed curves. Once all the panels are created, one of them is selected and made into a "garment" (Cloth->Make
Garment). From there, more panels are added by selecting pairs of curves and using the make seam command (Cloth-
>Make Seam).

Notice that the cloth doesn't show up as a surface until it's made into a garment, and additional pieces only become
surfaces when added to the garment. If the tesselation isn't matching your curves, up the resolution by selecting the
"cpSticher" node in the channel box and upping the base resolution. Resolution can be set independantly for different
panels, as well as for the entire garment.

The look of specific seams can be altered by selecting the component curves and altering the crease angle and stiffness.

Once you have a cloth object created, you can manipulate it a number of ways. You can directly move the vertices, but be
sure to use the Simulation->Update Cloth State command so that the simulation will know about the changes.

Animating Cloth
Dynamics
Cloth is a subset of Maya's dynamics system. Dynamics are ways of producing animation through computer simulation, as
opposed to keyframes. Since cloth is animated dynamically, you have to set up things for it to interact with, including fields
and collision objects.
Fields are areas of force that influence dynamically simulated objects and particles
Collision objects are objects that the cloth will interact with.
The dynamics of cloth are handled via one or more cloth solvers.
Solvers
Cloth animation is simulated, or generated on-the-fly via a lot of math. The math that tells what to go where when
is embodied in a solver. When you create a cloth object, a solver is automatically created. Although one is usually all you
need, there are sometimes benefits to having more than one (if you have a large number of cloth objects in the same
scene). A solver can control any number of cloth object, but each cloth object can only have a single solver.
 To start the solver, you have to run the cloth simulation, either by playing the animation, or using the Simulation-
>Start Simulation command. Note that each time you make changes to the scene that would affect how the cloth is
simulated, you'll need to delete the cache (Simulation->Delete Cache).
Solvers can be scaled to make the cloth appear smaller or larger in its motion. A good rule of thumb to follow is:

solver scale= desired size/Maya size

Therefore, is you had a character 6 inches tall in Maya, but wanted cloth to act as if they were 5ft tall, you'd use 10 as the
solver scale (10 = 60inches / 6 inches).
When you first run the simulation, the cloth object will settle down onto it's collision objects, constraints, etc.
Instead of having that continuously happen each time you start your animation, you can set an initial state for the cloth. Go
to a frame where the cloth has "settled in", and use the Simulation->Save as Initial Cloth State command.
Setting Cloth Properties
A cloth property is similar to a shader, in that one creates property sets for each kind of fabric in the scene, and then
applies the property on a per-panel basis to the cloth objects. A default property, "cpDefaultProperty" is created for you
when you create a cloth object, but you can manually create additional ones via Simulation->Properties->Create Cloth
Property. Once you've created additional properties, you can assign them to panels by selecting the panels, and going to
Simulation->Properties->cpProperty#
You can save out cloth properties from the Attribute Editor to create a library of cloth properties.
Adding collision objects etc
To add a collision object, select the object, and go to Cloth->Create Collision Object. Note that this applies to the
current solver only. Collision objects can be unhitched from the solver by using the Cloth->Remove Collision Object
command.
To add a field, first create the desired field from the Dynamics->Fields menu. Select your cloth object, right-click to
select vertices, and select all the vertices of the object. Shift-select the field, and go to Constraints->Field to link the two
up.

You can also use a variety of other kinds of constraints to control your cloth animation. Example- adding a transform
constraint.
- Create a locator (Create->Locator)
- Position Locator with respect to your object
- Select either a panel curve, or a group of vetices on the cloth object
- Shift-select the locator
- go to Constraints->Transform
Now when you animate the locator, the cloth will follow, maintaining the original distance.