Animate(move) a flag with cloth modifier

hi there, I have a mesh(flag) and i’ve applied a cloth modifier on it, around 200frames of animation. Baked all physics, so my cloth is now moving nicely…what I’d like to ask is if it is possible at this point to move the already animated mesh around my scene. Let’s say have a moving flag on a moving boat. I’ve tried with simple keyframing but it seems like i can’t get the flag move. Then i freed all bakes and tried to simultaneously bake cloth+moving animation, again doesn’t seem to work…any ideas?

Your blend file ?

Upload to http://www.pasteall.org/blend/ and reply back with the download link and maybe someone will look at it for you

Well, I made a quick cloth simulation on a subdivided plane and I also added a wind force field for fun. It seemed to work for me fine. I’d suggest that you try re-simulating your cloth after keyframing it’s location, then baking it.

It’s hard to upload due to the internet connection here, I’ll try it again. So, I’ve tried to simulate the cloth after keyframing but it’s only the ‘origin point’ that’s being animated, the mesh remains at the same spot, modifier works though. The moment i remove the cloth modifier, keyframe move-animation is there, working…

I came up with the idea to append my physics-baked flag to another blend file and try do the rest of animation there, but still…only the ‘origin point’ seems to move and the mesh remains still(well not totally as it is moving by the modifier). What do you think i might be doing wrong?

Furthermore, it’s not possible to move my mesh anywhere around the scene after having baked the pshysics-cloth modifier. So, that’s it? If i bake a simulation it has to stay at that exact location forever?

At one point I was able to drag a flag around using a soft body simulation. I just pinned the corners to the pole and animated the pole.

There’s a lot of ways to do it. You can create an empty. Parent the wind and the flag to the empty. Key frame the empty moving and then rebake the cloth sim on the flag.

What seemed to work for what i wanted to do is, after having baked my animation, export it to pc2 format then remove the animation from the flag and add a mesh cache modifier, now I can move the ‘moving flag’ whenever i want.
Surely there has to be an easier way but nothing else i’ve tried seemed to work for who-knows-reasons…thanks everyone anyways :slight_smile: