[Update] Animation, Socks and Cloth Simulation

Hey there, it’s time for another update. 

I’ve more or less finished off the character animation for Rog, as well as animating the chair he’s sitting in buckling under him too. I’ll still be doing some tweaking to both, but nothing major needs to be done at this stage. I’m also in the process of setting up some early audio stuff, so his facial animations may be altered again depending on how that goes. 

With that mostly sorted, I’m currently working on doing cloth simulation for everything that needs it now. I was actually hoping to save posting this until I’d finished with all the simulation work this scene requires, but it's been dragging on and I didn't want to leave you guys waiting too long between updates. 

Cloth simulation:

Simulations in general (not just cloth) have been the source of the most headaches I’ve encountered while working on projects in Blender, and this time hasn’t been all that different.

It’s a lot of tweaking settings and re-baking simulations over and over, along with making scene modifications when necessary. You can never really tell if one is going to go smoothly, or spiral out into a mess of complications. 

So far I've completed work on the cushion he sits on as well as his socks. Those socks are now complete with new materials and hair curves for fuzz too (more on that later on): 

They're simulated in a limited way; allowing them to fold, wrinkle and flex around his toes as he wiggles them. With the socks done, I've moved onto the rest of his outfit and I'm currently working on his shorts (which have come with their own set of complications).

The main issue is that Rog is rather thick. He's got very muscular legs and he spends a good deal of this animation with them crossed. That means a lot of skin to skin contact and clipping, which the cloth simulation doesn’t like for obvious reasons. His shorts also have that very prominent bulge to contain his big ol' orc hog; which has a habit of getting all tangled up when simulated, or causing distortions when pinned in place.

I've run through a bunch of possible fixes including; changing how the cloth is pinned, subdividing the mesh, decimating the mesh, scaling up the scene for better collision accuracy, and trying to prevent clipping before and after the simulation in various ways. Currently I'm also trying separating out his shorts into pieces and simulating them on their own with their own colliders:

It's been working much better than my other solutions, but still needs more work. In the end I may need to rethink the shorts' design. And if that doesn't work, I'll just have to scrap the cloth simulation for them and give him something more form-fitting instead.

The socks are the main focus of this animation after all, so it's worth going through the extra time and effort for them, while the same can’t be said for the rest of his outfit.

And speaking of socks...

Materials shaders and hair curves for socks:

On top of simulating Rog's socks I've also overhauled their material shader too!

This is the fourth iteration of the shader, with a more accurate and higher detail thread pattern. I've also added hair curves to each sock to give them that fluffy look too. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out, but they're still two things that need further tweaking.

First is getting some of that ‘translucency’ back in. As mentioned in my previous post, one of the things I want in this animation is for light to filter through the socks when he's stretching them. At the moment you're getting much more of that from the older version, since there's more space between the threads. 

Second is tweaking the hair curves for the fluff. They look good when they're far away from the camera, but for the close-up stomps they look pretty thin. I'm thinking I'll try animating their thickness; so that they appear thicker when they're nearer the camera and vice versa.

What's left to do?

Once I've finished with all this cloth simulation stuff the next stage will be scene-building. As mentioned in my previous update post, I'm planning on setting this in a greenhouse to preserve the amount of light shining into the scene.

Then once that’s all done I can move on to adding those ant-sized human micros in, which should be the last thing that needs doing before it’s time for rendering.