In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we take an introductory look at the cloth simulator.
This tool allows you to create physical based simulations of different kinds of cloth with relative ease.
Related Tutorials on this Network
Our computers have come up with the following lessons that may interest you.
Discussion
59 Responses to “Introduction to Cloth Simulation”Leave a Comment
Super awesome…. answered a lot of questions I was having
This was very helpful. cloth simulation looks a lot easier than I thought it would be. Keep posting good tutorials!
Great tutorial. I was wondering is there any way to make the cloth tear in blender?
Also i learned something new with the Alt I to remove the keyframes i never new of that shortcut.
Awesome tutorial.
Great tutorial.
But how can we record this simulation to render in an animation ?
That’s also my question: how do you render the simulation into an animation?
all you have 2 do is restart to frame 1 go put format and everything where to save it then click animation
Hey, it might be worth showing how to move cloth pins with hooks.
Also, IIRC, you can’t really use subsurf AND pinning on a cloth sim because subsurf spreads out the weight of the vert group, and you’ll end up with weird results.
Other than that, nice tutorial!
How do we play back after the simulation without recalculating everything? Is there a way to bake it?
Never mind. I found it.
Couldn’t you just bake the simulation (under cloth cache)?
You click on bake, you stop the video for the time of the physics baking (a minute or so, depending of your resolution and stuff) and you get a completely fluent animation.
Just want to help!
A nice introduction to cloth. Thanks!
wow, thank you! I couldn’t figure out the cloth!
Very inspirational! =)
Nice tutorial.
Keep up the good work !
Hey guys – also wanted to add, that this tutorial is our first tutorial using the sexy new Vimeo code which allows for playback on your iPhone or iPad!
Hi Jonathan, thanks. Tutorial is great
. I just created easy animation of wind: http://www.lexter.name/skladiste/projekty/video/cloth-simulation1_hi/index.html
hey i know this isn’t relevent but im having trouble with the fluid simulator… whenever i click bake it doesn’t bake the one i want, rather a bake that i did do like 3 months ago. its really frustrating because it doesn’t allow me to use the fluid simulator. any help?
you need to clear out your cache.
Free bake, change resolution one down and change it one up again and you should be fine.
Where is the tut on baking?
Thanks for the cool tips with 2.5 jonathan. keep up the nice tuts
question about this great tutorial:
why is it that if I do a normal render image or animation i don’t get the cloth deformation (i.e.: all I get is the flat plane with the subsurf mod), but if I do an opengl render or animation I get to see the cloth deform?
don’t know if it matters, but this happens on both linux (kubuntu lucid 64) and on my mac mbp’s10.
I must be missing something really simple, no?
Thanks.
For animation you need to bake the simulation. I realized I missed this first time around and so in the next few days I will be doing a Cloth Intro Round 2 that will cover baking, movable pins, etc.
-Jonathan
Thanks for the reply, Jonathan. I will play some more with the simulation and see if I can get it to render.
Thanks again.
alrighty… got the cloth simulation to bake, have the “use modifier during rendering” button selected and yet neither the still nor the animation dont render with the cloth simulation… this is a weird head-scratcher…
I will wait for your next tutorial and see what it is that i am missing.
thanks,
AHA! once i applied the subsurf modifier, i was able to render both animation and stills with the cloth modifier showing up properly. i dont know if this is a bug or if it is expected behavior…
I cannot find the other video, I really need to render this really soon.
thanks jonathan realy helped me with my batman cape
much appreciated
Hiyas Johnathan,
Thank you for all your awesome tutorials, I always enjoy them, and hopefully oneday I may be good enough to be able to do some tut’s to share.
I was playing with settings while doing your tutorial on cloth simulator here, and applied a normals setting and I thought the effect was cool.
Flat plain, sub-surf, with a texture and cloth sim w/ normals.
I just noticed the cool effect of the normals settings on top of the Cloth Simulation. I posted the effect here
http://vimeo.com/14369849
I didn’t have a uv grid, so I applied a image that I had saved from someone else… I am not sure who artwork it was or if I am stepping on toes, If anyone knows who the artist was please give them props they are awesome. It is amazing work they did. If there are any problems with it being used I will pull it.
Once again, Thanks Jonathan, Your tutorials are awesome!
Tungster
Ha, that is a very trippy effect! Nice work. I cannot remember who the artist is, but I do recognize the work…
-Jonathan
Excellent tutorial as always Jonathan! I’ve always had trouble with cloth sims, so this should help out a lot!
Quick question: is the “Apply Deformation” script available in 2.5 as of yet or have the developers implemented this functionality in some other way do you know? This was a great technique that I actually picked up almost a year ago from your witches hat tutorial!
-Tim
Thanks Jonathan!!, I was avoiding this issue because I thought it was hard to understand the cloth but is not.
More tutorials about this please!!.
Great work!!.
Greetings.
Great work Jonathan! An excellent and informative tutorial as always
create tutorial
cloth + force fields “WIND”
Jonathan!!, how to freeze at least one frame of the animation?.
Greetings!!.
For some reason my collisions do not work, unless I add and then Remove “Collision” to the plane. Weird.
Is it normal that material won’t render, nor will the texture. In the outliner the renderability is ON on the plane but I can’t change the ‘eye’ icon or the render ‘camera’ icon. Is there anything special to do?
Hi Alex,
What are your material and texture settings?
-Jonathan
Hi, how can I make a picture of it like you have at the top of the page when I stop it on a frame I like and the click render it goes to it floating above and does not have that cool pattern on it no more?
Many thanks
Nice Tut- This was much simpler than I expected, and I followed along without my normal hiccups and banging head against desk.
Very cool
Your intro was very helpful in modelling some props for a cafe scene that I am working on
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/jB_s2AsauDIKk5fa4zwWgw?feat=directlink
Cheers
Nice Tutorial Blender 2.5.6 is something really special
Thanks for the tutorial. But as I could see, the second side of this plane was transparent. How can I make a texture to be displayed on the both sides? Thanks a lot
Tutorial is good, but how can i create a keyframe animation of the simulation(like with reactor in 3ds max)?
Active the Pingas!!!
When I click alt A and play it it still goes through my sphere but still reacts to it HELP!!!
Sub for sub?
hey , guys , im a 17 years old guy frm south africa who has been using blender for 2 months now ,i am still a noob but i managed to create the phone im using ,anyway i hve a prblm using ths syt , hw do u gt the tutorials ,cn any1 help plz n oh ya’ll do awesome pics ,im so jealous
Hey Jonathan, when my sphere was moving towards the cloth, it hit it and then my cloth got stuck in it. Do you know how to fix this.
This was really helpful! I have one question though. Why doesn’t the collision work with an animated rigged character? I have a jacket with cloth simulation on and I have a torso with collision and it just goes through the torso when Iä’m animating the character
The Collision modifier needs to be below the Armature modifier in the modifier stack.
cool stuff thanks allot
Hi! This tutorial is great. I learnt a lot. But when the “cloth” is under my sphere (ball sounds ugly) and I press F12 to render, I just see the sphere, and not the cloth. What do I have to do to see the cloth and the ball together? Thanks.
Awesome tutorial but, when I turned on textured solid for the cloth and pressed Alt+a it wouldn’t play the animation anymore even if I switched it back off, any ideas on what’s happening?
nmv, I redid the whole thing and I must have had edit mode on.
Even though my outer collision is set to the lowest setting, the cloth deforms before it has made contact with the mesh, is this supposed to happen, is there a way to get the cloth to actually touch the mesh, with no gap.
Hi Simon, you should be able to adjust the amount of gap from the Cloth collision settings. Also if you increase the quality of the simulation the gap should be less.
Thank you, I was able to get rid of the distance, however now my problem is that the cloth and the mesh are merging, so the cloth is breaking apart and showing the mesh through the cloth, so even though I have self collision checked, it stops the cloth colliding into itself and breaking the geometry, how do I do the same for the cloth and the colliding mesh. I hope that makes sense. lol.
p.s- Cloth simulation is amazing.
Thanks for this tutorial – still have a bunch to learn but had a lot of fun experimenting with different settings – had a lot of failures, but I did learn from those too – this youtube video shows some of my mistakes….
http://youtu.be/jMomay52PhQ
Really cool Thx Jonathan! Just one question if I have an object like a bed and I make this sheets like this can I just have the cloth lay on top without having the animation part?