From LightWiki

Contents 1 Basic 2 Collision 3 Advanced 4 Etc 5 File and Edit

Basic

• Group: Controls which Dynamics Group this effect belongs to. If you have lots of dynamics in your scene, you can speed up calculation by having only one wind affect your shirt for example.
• Fix: You can use this to select a vmap/surface/part which will be unaffected by the cloth dynamics. Use this to lock the waist band of a skirt for example.
• Weight: This sets the weight of each vertex in the ClothFX object.
• Spring: This sets the how strongly each vertex in the ClothFX object pulls at each vertex it's connected too. Lower values will mean your item stretches more.
• Viscosity: This sets how slowly your object stretches or deforms. Low values (e.g. 1) will make it seem like your object is in air, whilst high values (e.g. 1000) will make it seem like your object is in molasses.
• Resistance: This sets how quickly your object stops moving due to 'air resistance' or how strongly it is affected by wind. Low values mean it won't be slowed down much or blown much.
• Sub Structure: This builds virtual links between vertices to try to keep your objects local shape. It stops your object deforming as much with high values (e.g. 1000). This may seem similar to Spring, but Spring only affects those vertices joined by polygons, Sub structure takes into account vertices further away. This means a sheet of cloth is less bendy and more resistant to shearing with a high Sub structure value than one with a high Spring value.
• Hold Structure: This controls how strongly your objects vertices are attracted to their original position. It's useful for making wobbly flesh, and other things of that nature.

Collision

• Record Collision Points:
• FixByEvent/StartByEvent: This allows you to pass a collision object of type Event through the clothFX object and have the clothFX object either freeze in place, or start its motion.
• Collision Detect: This selects which area of a clothFX mesh is collidable (or you can select All for the whole mesh).
• Exclusive Collision: You can choose just one object for the clothFX object to collide with using this, to speed up calculation.
• Interaction: You can limit which parts of the cloth object interact with themselves by selecting a point/poly group with this.
• Collision Offset: This determines how close a cloth object can get to something it's colliding with.
• Bound: This determines how much a cloth object bounces.
• Friction: This determines how much friction there is between the cloth object and another object.
• Fix Force: This determines how quickly a cloth object will stick to a collision object.
• Connected: This will treat each shell of polygons as separate entities for colliding with each other.
• SelfCollision: Turn this on to have the cloth collide with itself (to the detriment of speed of calculation).
• DoubleSided: Turn this on to have the cloth collide with its own backside (again to the detriment of speed).

Advanced

• Resistance Mode: With this you can choose whether air/wind resistance affects all polygons, no polygons, or just the front/back of polygons.
• Mode Ratio: This determines how much of a polygon's angle to wind affects its resistance. For 0% it's always affected by wind, for 100%, as the polygon becomes side on to the wind, its resistance will lessen (like a piece of paper).
• Compress Stress: This determines how the cloth crumples. For high values, the object will behave like thick leather, a few big ripples. For low, lots of little ripples, like fine silk. With high values of this, you can have a sphere act like a half inflated ball.
• Stretch Limit: Used to control how much the mesh can stretch, smaller values would be inelastic materials like silk, larger values would be used for cotton or Lycra. Set this first as it has less impact on calculation speed than sub structure or spring.
• Polygon Size: Enlarges or shrinks the mesh polygons to this percentage. By enveloping this value you can make a mesh tighter or become more baggy.
• Fibre Effect: Will bias the calculation so as to imitate cloth. For a flag you might set it follow the direction of its shape.
• Relax Start:

Etc

• Gravity: You can use this to add gravity to your cloth object without having to add a GravityFX object to your scene. A Y value of -9.81 m/s^2 is a close approximation of Earth gravity.
• Resolution: The determines the accuracy of the calculations. Smaller values will give more accurate results, but will involve more computation.
• View Feedback: Gives you a colour-based idea of how vertex maps or settings are going to affect the mesh.
• Numeric Feedback: As above, but displays numerical values.
• Preset: Allows you to quickly choose between some standard settings which you can then modify yourself.

File and Edit

The FX_File_Tab and EditFX have common settings across FX, please refer to those pages.

With ClothFX, you can split and sew cloth to itself or another object which has points including Null objects which have 1 point at their pivot point. This can be used to dynamically switch a cloth's parent, pick it up, drop it, or tear it like cloth. To use ClothFX's sewing abilities, you have to define which points are to be sewn together, and then (optionally) pass a collision object through those points. The collision object can be set to split or sew when it passes through.

To start, select Sew Tool at the bottom of the EditFX tab in ClothFX. With this you can select a point to be sewn to another. Just click two points on the object and they'll be joined by a solid yellow line. To see the points of objects more clearly, set the view to a Wireframe based type. They aren't set yet, so click the Sewing toggle at the bottom. If you want to pick the cloth up with another object, or drop it, you can select the other object using the Object drop down next to the Sew Tool button. With that 'Sewn' connection selected, you can choose whether a collision object will cut or sew the connection in the Event drop down. The object will have to pass through one of the points and have a CollisionFX on it, set to type Event for it to sew/cut the connection.

The Node value is the point index of the currently selected point.

Sewn points will have a dotted yellow line stretching between them, but they'll only attach together when Calculate is hit.