Just wondering not actually gonna trie!

[spmjcom]

Im just wondering if you can animate clothes. Like you can animate hair. :bunny:

[HystericalParoxysm]

Erm, well, it depends on what you mean by "animated."

Animated hair is done by assigning the various vertexes to the different bones in the head area... Up until recently we were really only able to use the basic bones... head, neck, spine1, spine2, etc.; windkeeper posted a method that we can do to now use the hair animation bones, which are used for finer animation like bangs flipping up when the sim moves and such. It's the fine detail involved in the way the vertices are assigned to these bones that makes such subtle, wonderful animations - different vertexes in different positions are assigned to different bones with varying weights, and each vertex can be assigned with certain weights to multiple vertices.

Similar concepts apply to body meshes; vertices must be assigned to the proper bones for body meshes or you'll end up with strange creases, points, etc.; if one is doing a major edit to a body mesh, the bone assignments must be fixed to reflect the changes, so when a sim moves, the body mesh moves correctly, too. One could, potentially, add parts to a body mesh that animate in a similar way to hair meshes (in that it moves in a natural way when the sim moves), with multiple bone assignments for the vertices. I don't think you'd get as much fine detail with the animation, simply due to the fact that there aren't complex animation bones for bodies the same way there are for hair, but if one wanted to make a flap of cloth like the bottom of a skirt or coat or something similar hanging down kind of waft about in a natural way when the sim moves, playing with the bone assignments would probably accomplish something fairly convincing.

[spmjcom]

Do u like the idea?

[tiggerypum]

We've had 2 hair issues - the first is that our tools have improved such that we can now get smooth transitions when the sim turns their head, whereas before the hair would tend to crinkle... which some will call 'good animation' but... as for the wonderous discussion happening in the forum right now:

When people refer to 'animated hair' right now they're referring to hair that especially responds to extra bones that exist on the skeleton that are used to make the hair giggle around ever so slightly as if there is air moving around the sim.

No such bones exist on the lower part of the skeleton, ones that the game moves just a little bit in the pattern of a breeze. When you make the bone/animation/envelope assignments, they anchor/glue that vertex to the particular 'bones'. So the difficulty you'll encounter is that there is no lower body bones that do that little wiggle thing. And if you try to use the head ones, they will not correlate to the position or movement of the lower body at all, but to the positioning of the head as it moves.... and will probably distort your lower assignments up or down in odd ways as the head moves.

Now, let's add to that the knowledge that people are having mixed results getting any sort of good breeze animation on the hair - right now they're running hair specifically through the smd import/export just to get them working at all. Sometimes using the same settings as Maxis hair is not giving the same results.

The assignments are pretty fussy, I will note that I incorrectly assigned a vertex in the lower front center of a man's outfit which looked fine when he was standing, walking and dancing, but when he sat down, that vertex elevated itself a good distance from his lap, looking quite, uhm, special and giving me quite a laugh.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Um, well... *blinks* Do I like it? That's kind of an odd question...

I'm really not sure exactly how much truly could be done for clothing/body meshes... I don't think you could make, like, a cloak or coat swirl about someone in an imposing and impressive fashion the way you might be able to with hair, but I've seen some interesting ideas... a spider body (instead of a sim lower body) with the legs assigned to the bones normally used for the sim's legs, so they move when the sim walks (I hadn't seen it in game, but I'd seen the concept discussed and it sounded interesting). I'm sure other things could be done to create interesting effects on bodies... it's just a matter of it being a Big Bottle of Aspirin project, as there's not a whole lot intuitive about bone assignments, especially when you get into adjusting all the weights exactly. That kinda stuff can get really fiddly, and checking animations is a pain as you actually have to load the game and go into a lot to see if one tiny change actually had the effect you wanted... So, um, yeah, I guess I like the -idea-, I just don't like the thought of having to actually DO it.

Edit: Yeah, and what Tig said, too. :D

[WesHowe]

Unlike hair meshes, which do animate via bone assignments, I have never seen body meshes use anything other than 43 of the 44 'standard' bones (all but the head). Unlike the hair meshes with the _hair bone assignments, none of the nonstandard bones (animation points like 'backtarget_surface, 'dress', 'r_shortsleeve') have actually been assigned in any body/clothing mesh file I have ever analyzed.
Of course, I won't say never... I haven't analyzed every body mesh in the game.
<* Wes *>