9

778 Chapter 13: reactor
Cl oth
Cloth objects in reactor are two-dimensional
deformable bodies. Using cloth objects you can
simulate flags, curtains, clothing (skir ts, c apes,
shirts), banners and even materials like paper and
sheet metal.
This sect ion contains two topics:
• Cloth Modifier (page 2–778):Applyittoeach
mesh to be deformed as cloth.
• Cloth Collection (page 2–781):Acontainerfor
cloth objects.
Cloth Modif ier
Menubar>reactor>ApplyModifier>ClothModifier
reactor toolbar > Apply Cloth Modifier butto n
The Cloth modifier lets you to turn any geometry
into a deformable mesh, allowing you to simulate
the behavior of objects such as curtains, clothes,
metal sheets, and flags. You can specify a number
of special properties for cloth objects, including
stiffness and how the object folds.
To add a cloth object to the simulation, you need
to add it to a Cloth Collection (page 2–781).
Procedures
To create a Cloth object:
1.
Create the mesh object that you would like to
simulate as cloth.
Note: In reactor the underlying topology of this
object can influence the cloth’s behavior. For
instance, cloth tends to fold along contiguous
edges; highly tessellated meshes also stretch
more, etc. Irregular triangulations (for
example, a Delaunay triang ulation of a 3ds Max
NURBS surface) results in isotropic behavior
(same behav ior across a l l directions), avoiding
artificial creases and folds around specific
directions; it can therefore produce more
realistic-looking results for pieces of clothing.
Regular triangulations (like that of a standard
3ds Max plane) lead to anisotropic behavior
(tendency to folding and creasing is different
depending on the direction), this of course
mightbeirrelevantorevendesirableinsome
situations.
Tip: A quick, easy way to create a Delaunay
mesh for reactor Cloth is to apply the Garment
Maker modifier (page 1–607) to a shape.
Different tessellation produces different cloth behavior.