Cloth Simulation
Physical simulation of fabric
Also known as: Marvelous Designer · Cloth sim · Blender cloth · Chaos Cloth Unreal · Cloth physics game · Garment simulation
Definition
Cloth simulation calculates how fabric moves and drapes under gravity, wind and collisions. Offline tools such as Marvelous Designer, designed for garments with patterns and seams, and the cloth simulation in Blender and Houdini produce realistic drapes for sculpts, film and cinematics. In games, real-time cloth, such as Chaos Cloth in Unreal Engine, simulates capes, skirts and banners on characters at a low cost, by simplifying the mesh and limiting how far the cloth can move.
In production
For art, simulate the garment on the character in a neutral pose, then use the result as the base for a sculpt and retopology. For real-time cloth, paint a max distance map so parts near the body move less, and keep the mesh density low. Tight clothing is usually skinned to the body and animated with the skeleton, and only loose parts use physics.
