Scripting and Dynamics

I've completely forgotten to update my blog so far, which isn't the best start. This does however mean this should be a fairly lenghtly blog post.

Most of my time since February has currently been filled with research, be it my own or into other papers online. Recently, shaders have been my main focus - to create an effective looking wet cloth shader which simulates not only the shine of certain damp materials, but the translucency as well.

Investigations into wet hair also appeared useful - as although different in most aspects, both hair and cloth are constrained by soft body physics and react in similar ways. For instance, in this clip, Merida's hair is obviously heavier (0:57) when damp. Cloth acts in a similar way.

The videos I've recorded for testing and research purposes are being uploaded to vimeo this week; displaying the differences between damp and dry materials. They also show the movements of a skirt which I intend to focus my modelling on.

I've decided to focus on a specific piece of clothing I own, and attempt to replicate it in Maya. This skirt has multiple layers of cloth, and is made out of a chiffon-like material. As a starting point I've created a single layer skirt with slight rigidity to simulate the volume of multiple layers. If I'm to continue this project, I may add in multiple layers and attempt to recreate realistic multi-cloth collisions. Dry cloth simulation with this skirt is currently implemented, and different techniques are currently being applied to create a realistic transition from dry to wet.

I've created a character in MakeHuman and imported it into Maya from a .obj file. I've then rigged this character so that I can animate it to display different movements and interactions between clothing and character. This gave higher mesh detail than I would have liked, but is a quick way to create a model without searching for hours online and having to worry about copyright and fees.

I am slightly behind schedule, and have not yet implemented particle effects to create drips from certain points in the material, but I have begun my report referencing my research first. I did however anticipate being behind schedule, and have left myself plenty of time in the next 3 weeks to get a suitable simulation together. This project is really exciting me at the moment, and I'm really looking forward to continuing with it not only after the semester but hopefully with intent towards honours projects.