Understanding Particles and Dynamics in Maya

Preview

1. Cloth Setup

Step 1

Open Maya.

Step 2

I’ll explain the character’s cloth simulation using an arm mesh which I have made purposely for the tutorial. You can find Arm.mb file in the attachment.

Step 3

To make a full sleeve cloth for the arm, create a cylinder primitive in the viewport and cover the arm mesh as shown in the following image.

Step 4

With the arm mesh selected go to Display > Hide > Hide Selection to hide the arm mesh. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-H to apply the Hide command.

Step 5

With the cylinder primitive selected, increase the Subdivisions Height value to 25 to add more segments to the cylinder.

Step 6

Press F11 key to jump in the face selection mode. Select the cap faces of the cylinder and delete them. Rename the cylinder mesh as Cloth.

2. Arm Rigging and Skinning

Step 1

Unhide the arm mesh and hide the cloth mesh.

Step 2

Jump in the Animation mode. Go to Skeleton > Joint Tool.

Step 3

Draw the bones as shown in the following image.

Step 4

Select the joint chain followed by the arm mesh and go to Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.

Step 5

You can check the skinning of the arm mesh by rotating the middle joint. You can also animate the rotation of the arm.

3. Creating Garment Simulation

Step 1

Go to Display > Show > All to unhide the cloth mesh.

Step 2

Jump in nDynamics mode. With the cloth mesh selected, go to nMesh > Create nCloth to apply the cloth modifier.

Step 3

With the arm mesh selected, go to nMesh > Create Passive Collider.

Step 4

With the cloth selected, make a right click on it and select the Vertex mode. In the vertex mode, select the indicated vertices as shown in the following image.

Step 5

With the vertices selected, press Shift key and select the arm mesh and then go to nConstraint > Point to Surface. This binds all the selected vertices of the cloth to the arm mesh.

Step 6

Go to dynamicContraintShape1 attribute tab. In the Connection Density Range roll out, set the Rest Length Method to Constant and the value of Rest Length to 1.

Step 7

Go to nucleus1 attribute tab. In the Scale Attributes rollout, set the values of Time Scale to 0.666 and Space Scale to 0.222.

Step 8

Hit the play button and you will see the cloth simulation with the movement of the arm.

4. Skirt Simulation

Step 1

To show the skirt simulation, I have made the lower part of the character body including waist and legs.

Step 2

Create a cone with the Subdivisions value of 42 for both Height and Axis parameters as shown in the following image.

Step 3

Press F11 key to jump in the face selection mode. Select the bottom cap face and delete it. Select and delete the upper faces also as shown in the following image. Rename it as cloth.

Step 4

With the cloth mesh selected, go to nMesh > Create nCloth to apply the cloth modifier.

Step 5

With the body mesh selected, go to nMesh > Create Passive Collider.

Step 6

With the cloth selected, make a right click on it and select the Vertex mode. In the vertex mode, select the indicated vertices as shown in the following image.

Step 7

With the vertices selected, press Shift key and select the body mesh and then go to nConstraint > Point to Surface. This binds all the selected vertices of the cloth to the body mesh.

Step 8

Go to dynamicContraintShape2 attribute tab. In the Connection Density Range roll out, set the Rest Length Method to Constant and the value of Rest Length to 0.111.