Dynamic Bones for Clothing.

[nekosasukelovix Haiku]

Hypothetically if they released an update with a new set of "rigging bones"  exclusively made for clothing, would it enhance the experience in game or have a negative effect?

(Again this isn't a serious topic, just wondering how would everyone take it.)

[Randy Pole]

This would be a negative effect.

How would these hypothetical rigging bones interact with the rigged body? Which deformation to the skeleton would have priority? What incentive is there to have yet another rigging system added for clothing developers to cater for in addition to the many that are already out there?

Ideally a decent rigging skeleton would have been introduced before mesh exploded onto the scene so that (again hypothetically) any clothing would have fitted any body. Alas this did not happen and it is now too late to try to throw a sticking plaster over it and try to achieve consistency.

[Coffee Pancake]

See Animesh.

[ItHadToComeToThis]

18 hours ago, Randy Pole said:

This would be a negative effect.

How would these hypothetical rigging bones interact with the rigged body? Which deformation to the skeleton would have priority? What incentive is there to have yet another rigging system added for clothing developers to cater for in addition to the many that are already out there?

Ideally a decent rigging skeleton would have been introduced before mesh exploded onto the scene so that (again hypothetically) any clothing would have fitted any body. Alas this did not happen and it is now too late to try to throw a sticking plaster over it and try to achieve consistency.

I really want them to update the basic body and basic clothing. The old style clothing we had long ago, you could alter all kinds of properties and that was still a form of mesh. Shame they can't work with that to improve it and modernise the concept.

[Lindal Kidd]

I gather the OP is trying to restore something like we used to have with flexi skirts and hair. It's an understandable suggestion, but bones are probably not the way to do it. What we need is some sort of system of real time cloth physics with gravity, wind, and collisions. Sadly, I don't think we're likely to get it.

[LittleMe Jewell]

33 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

What we need is some sort of system of real time cloth physics with gravity, wind, and collisions.

This ^^

Or something so that my long formal dress does not flap in an extremely weird way when I walk.

Edited January 23, 2023 by LittleMe Jewell

[Ezbeharra]

2 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I gather the OP is trying to restore something like we used to have with flexi skirts and hair. It's an understandable suggestion, but bones are probably not the way to do it. What we need is some sort of system of real time cloth physics with gravity, wind, and collisions. Sadly, I don't think we're likely to get it.

Honestly that sounds like it would rule. I hadn't even thought of it before, and now I'm sad we don't have it.

[Bree Giffen]

Honestly I don’t see these sort of things in high end games and if they do it’s not that impressive or even immersion breaking.

[LittleMe Jewell]

Sinewave - I think that was the one - had clothing that moved much more natural when the avatar moved.  Skirts look realistic when dancing.  

[animats]

There are two basic problems here.

First is resolving layering and fit issues when you change clothes. There are systems where, when you get dressed, clothing physics runs, the fabric drapes, and once it settles into position, then it's locked to the inner layers. After that, it's just rigged mesh. Metahuman does that for hair. Marvelous Designer has that for clothing design. SL really needs it at clothing change time. SL needs something like that, because SL has worse clothing problems than anybody else in this space.

Second is real-time draping for clothing. That's expensive to compute, but once in a while you do see it in games. Unreal Engine 5 has it, but it has to be used sparingly. In the UE5 "Valley of the Ancients" demo, it's used for the woman's scarf, but not much else. It would be nice to have long dresses and coats which drape properly, and never have legs going through the fabric. It would take more engine than most SL users have. For a good summary, search for "Cloth Simulation for Games: Difficulties and Current Solutions", which is a lightweight technical article on the subject.

The puppetry meetings have increased interest in making animations a little more responsive to collisions. If you don't do that right, you get arms moving through bodies and such. It looks terrible. VRchat got this solved, mostly, in their "IK 2.0", so solutions are known. This is about guessing where the elbow is when you have tracking info for the wrist but not the elbow. Go to the puppetry meeting (Thursday at 1 PM SLT) to see what's going on there.

Much of game graphics technology is figuring out how to do a lot of work once so it doesn't have to be done on each frame.

[PekeNL]

5 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

What we need is some sort of system of real time cloth physics with gravity, wind, and collisions.

You think SL already runs like crap? Wait until they implement this. You will be begging for a revert.

[Lindal Kidd]

9 hours ago, PekeNL said:

You think SL already runs like crap? Wait until they implement this. You will be begging for a revert.

Don't tell me why we can't have nice things! Figure out some way we CAN!!

...stomps her foot and pouts.