I am trying to model a simple flag which can wave a little in the wind. The frame of the flag is pinned, because I want only some movement in the middle of the flag.
The flag has a thickness which I would like to keep, if I can.
However, when I make a cloth out of the flag, the border faces of the flag separate from the main faces, which I can not explain at all, because they share the same vertices. I checked that some times already, no doubles.
If anyone can tell me how this can happen, please do so!
The .blend file with only the flag is attached.
You have an Edge Split modifier before the cloth simulation. It’s doing exactly what it says in the name, splitting those edges. I don’t know why you have it there at all really.
You also need to clean up those n-gons and add a bit more geometry to the flag to get a good cloth movement. Generally I prefer to model cloth as a 2-dimensional plane with no thickness, add a cloth simulation, then add a Solidify modifier after the cloth to give it realistic thickness without having to fight the simulation to clean up self-collision.
Since you are pinning it on 3 edges and the cloth is tightly connected, there is nowhere for the cloth to move. make it a bit looser.
Mass reduced, structural stiffness reduced, and the unpinned vertices moved a bit as well as other things. Since the object is quite small, I adjusted the gravity to 1/10 and took out the edge split (nopt sure why it is there)
Still not perfect since the 2 sides of the cloth intersect: [ATTACH]345445[/ATTACH]
This is a slightly better one where the cloth is a single plane, with the thickness provided with a solidify after the cloth.[ATTACH]345447[/ATTACH]
You still have to play with it, and next time try to increase the number of faces in the flag itself to give a nice movement.
@K Horseman: Now that you say it the Edge Split modifier looks like the obvious culprit, thanks a lot! So far I have used it only to make sharp edges of smoothly rendered objects appear not smooth; in this case for the zigzagged end of the flag which looked bulged when rendered smoothly. I did not expect it to do that by actually splitting the edges in two, as the name suggests.
Changing the order of the modifiers solved this, however, thanks a lot!
@BiggR: I knew that the movement would only be minimal because of the three pinned edges, but still I want to go for it to have some cloth movement at all. I also tried it with many more vertices, but for this very simple example I kept this number low.
I will try out the other parameters and your examples later today, now I have to go to work (it is morning here). Thanks a lot, too!
@BiggR: The problem with the plane is that my flag needs two different textures on front and back side. Maybe there is an easy way to accomplish this in Blender that I do not know of, but that was the initial reason for a solid flag.
Create a second material on the object and set the Solidify Modifier’s material offset value to 1. If you want the rim between the two sides to have a third material, add a third material and set the rim material offset to 2.
I generally put the solidify modifier after the cloth simulation in the modifier stack, but you may get better results the other way around if you mess with the settings. You have to adjust the cloth stiffness values if you do because the simulator is using a heavier mesh.
Ah, I did not know about the material indices in the Solidify modifier. Thanks a lot, I will keep this in mind if I run into problems with my 3D flag!
Lovely textures, btw.
