United3dArtists Archive

Can anyone tell me how to halt the animation and extract the shape of the cloth at any period in time? I want to use the cloth feature to drape cloth over objects for fixed image rendering (curtains, bedclothes etc). Seems to me it's just a workspace animation feature. Hope I'm not just being stupid, and there's an obvious solution.
Cheers
Chris

Hi seejay. Use this Render Cloth to File tool. It is an RsObj file. When you load it, you will need to open the Link Editor,
select the node, and choose the MUST READ tab. The instructions for use are on that tab.

The node was created by Johny Tho. Many MANY thanks go to him for making this possible!

Cayenne (Paul Ashington) made an archive I believe, of the truespace forums, at awportals.com. Here is a link to the
conversation thread regarding the cloth render to file node. In one of the posts, someone mentioned that it took a long time to
render, since the animation was played back repeatedly. Something like that. I believe it is not necessary to do that. I will have to take a look, since I reviewed the node and made considerable modifications for the fluid sim importer playback utility, and
I don't have that issue:

http://www.awportals.com/archives/trues ... php?t=7506"

Thanks for your radid replies. I will look into your suggestions. I have found that I can simply set the option in the LE to 'continue' and move to the modeller where I can save the result of the animation as a .cob, if required. Still some experimentation to be performed.
Cheers

Taken from the Caligari Site 8/21/2008
Steinie:
"The new cloth tools are really really awesome! Hats off to whoever designed and programmed this one.
I notice something strange and needed some feedback.
After I create a cloth and freeze it by stopping the physics engine I save it as an object and I save the scene.
I load the saved object into a new scene but it is back in it's original starting shape. However the icon in the Stack shows the finished shape.
If I load the saved Scene the object is in it's new shape showing the effects of the physics engine.
Why does the shape revert back to it's original shape when saving objects?
trueBlue:
"After you stop the simulation, right click your cloth object to enter into Point Editing and then exit Point Editing. Use the Flatten History on it and save to Library."

rJeff:
"Ok I love the cloth stuff..you can make a table cloth real fast like with it...but my question is..once you get the table cloth where you want it..can you save the mesh in that state? All I can get it to do is the simulation and that is it."
JackEdwards:
"You have to check the "continue" checkbox on the Physics Engine panel in the link editor."

Just think of all the effort in prgramming, and all we do is make tablecloths. Still, a very good tool. I have noticed that my table cloth slides off the table after a while. Need to play with the friction I think.