Sails and ropes

[blackchicken]

 Hello

I have some scenes with lot of sails and ropes. I`m solving two problems:

1, Cloth speed in Houdini.... you know,but I have problem move cloth realistically. There`s  tab Drag in Cloth Object, but it does not work. I can set External Velocity Offset which I want, but there`s no change in sim. As I understand, it`s basic cloth regular wind force. With 3+ DOP fans I don`t have good results. Drag tab should be something like maya Ncloth default wind right?

2, Ropes. Which technique I should use? I need ropes to collide with clothes, two ways. One way is simulate ropes alone and then collide with cloth, so ropes deform clothes. Other way is simulate all together. I`m very new in grains, is this a possible way? I still thing specific parameters for cloth is better but problems with wire colliding,  tiny sheets of cloth does not work too. 

 

What do you thing? I will be happy stay in houdini and don`t want to simulate all in maya ncloth. Thanks a lot.  

 

[Farmfield]

I would sim ropes first - using the wire solver if you want rope on rope interaction (rope porn?) - and then sim the sails using the FEM cloth solver or grain solver. The grain solver is way faster than the FEM cloth solver though the FEM solver is easier to tweak to get a specific cloth look (stiffness, weight, etc) than using grain sheets. And I'm pretty sure I heard people state nCloth is substantially faster than both - though I don't have personal experience, so I might be wrong.

For doing a 2-way setup, so you have cloth feedback on the ropes and rope feedback on the cloth, I really think keeping it all as grains would be the least computationally expensive - doing feedback between different solvers is usually very heavy.

Edited October 7, 2016 by Farmfield

[blackchicken]

Thanks for answer. Main thing which makes me sad is that Drag does not work, i need nice subtle realistic motion of cloth. I have no problem with FEM cloth and speed I can handle this, but movement is problem now. 

[Farmfield]

Drag doesn't work where? With grains you'd use a POP drag as it's iterating over the POP solver, for the FEM, isn't there a dampening function in the object? Either way it's not overly difficult to setup some faux drag in a SOP solver, just putting something like @v *= .90; in a wrangle SOP is something I use a lot.