Rigged Mesh - Smooth Bind

[Amras Sparta]

I'm actually playing with the smooth bind options to make a long skirt "natural", but in all my tests the skirt always creates a line of division between the two legs when walking...

I've seen in a video that have been created skirts that do not have that problem ... I imagine it's because one of the options here are not well marked ... maybe ... "dropoff rate"?

Could anyone give me some suggestions?

I'm actually using Maya Autodesk 2011.

[Cathy Foil]

Sounds like you may need to add more vertex to your mesh between the legs.

Could you upload a photo of the line of division you are talking about and wire frame image of the mesh?

[Medhue Simoni]

That's exactly what I was thinking. The legs can stretch pretty far and a mesh and texture stretching like this will look very bad with limited verts. Plus, you'd have to texture it in a way so that the pattern condensed in the stretched area and still looked normal. Pleats would be interesting, especially for the rigging part. Playing with the weights on the verts will help also with more verts.

 

Good luck!

[Gospel Voom]

I'd certainly be running tests with dropoff rate. This setting effects the area of influence. A low number results in broad deformation across the model, a high number minimises / localises it. In this instance you want a low number.

Regards, Gos.

[Maeve Balfour]

Just a couple of general suggestions with skirts, slightly divergent from your original question, but I'll mention them since they might help with your creative process....

(NOTE: I haven't gotten into making rigged clothing meshes as yet - these are just things I have observed during my usage of mesh skirts to date).

The centre zones down the front and back of a skirt (the areas between the legs, dropping off towards the outer edges of each leg) are subject to extreme geometry stretching, especially when the legs are walking/running. I would allocate a relatively higher density of geometry in these areas to help combat the issue. HOWEVER, I would strongly suggest keeping geometry DETAIL in these areas to a minimum - pleats for example between the legs (especially below the knees) distort a LOT and can look very strange. The same applies to textures around those areas. I tend to prefer skirts with relatively boring textures (like a plain woollen weave) because of this stretching issue.

The outer sides of the legs, however, are much less prone to stretch. As such, I have found well designed skirts tend to have their geometry detailing around those areas (cloth folds, zippers etc).

Probably the BEST example I have seen of a well designed mesh maxi skirt would be one sold by Jane's - it's a one piece full body dress, with the skirt down to the ankles. The geometry works superbly for most animations, and the texturing is cleverly done - horizontal stripes, which tend to hide the texture stretching to a large degree. It's a clear example of working around the limitations of mesh skirts, rather than fighting against them. (For the record, I'm NOT advertising for this store LOL - I just like this particular dress a lot!)

I hope my general observations are helpful to you :matte-motes-smile: