Physical capes?

[Brendon123123]

So a friend of mine has all these mods for his Oblivion, and one is a really amazing set of armor that comes with a cape. However, it doesn't move at all, and is pretty much a stiff piece of clothing that sort of just.. hangs there off the shoulders, rather than billowing/moving like a cape should. I mean, this game has Havok physics, you'd think a billowing cape would be possible. Is there a mod to make capes billow in the wind? Or have any movement at all?

[Megatarius]

Not really, but there could be. It would just be a ton of work, so most people don't do it.

 

Havok physics doesn't govern movement, it just governs falling and dead bodies flopping. One would have to hand animate the capes. This would require the skeleton to be updated, the joints animated, and the models weight painted. It's doable, but difficult.

[alonsomartinez]

You cant animate clothing but you could add a " cape bone " with its bone priorities set to move freely Edited January 3, 2011 by alonsomartinez

[mcole254]

With adding a cape bone, you would have to edit every animation to add movement.

[alonsomartinez]

Not necessarily. I managed to make an addon to the horse skeleton and gave it wing bones which you can see here

 

All I did was animate the wing bones and exported as a seperate addon so that it can be selected in the Model Viewer in the CS

 

The wings actually flapped as the horse was riding , which amazed me.

 

If that worked I assume that adding a separate cape bone could work as well

 

Ill try it some other time...

Edited January 3, 2011 by alonsomartinez

[mcole254]

Even so, you would have to make separate animations for standing, fighting, siting, jumping, ect.

[BoscoClownie]

Rig it to the tail bone, I've seen it done. You'd need to have the Maximum compatibility Skeleton as a requirement, but it works quite well, really. Saw an armor that had a cape like that, what was it called... Fire Emblem armor? Something like that.

[alonsomartinez]

Yeah thats the one. The cape was a vast improvement to the game

[ub3rman123]

Rig it to the tail bone, I've seen it done. You'd need to have the Maximum compatibility Skeleton as a requirement, but it works quite well, really. Saw an armor that had a cape like that, what was it called... Fire Emblem armor? Something like that.

Black Knight Armor, it was.

[LHammonds]

Havok cannot be applied to anything worn in this game. It would be nice if they eventually include a cloth simulation system in their future games but they don't right now probably because of performance issues related to it.

 

There is only one way to simulate that effect in Oblivion but bear in mind that nothing will produce a solution that looks realistic in every situation (sitting on a horse for example). But there are two ways of going about it.

 

Method 1: Add new bones to the skeleton and rig the cape to the new skeleton bones and then create various animations to accompany the existing animations. This is typically not done because of major compatibility issues.

 

Method 2: Rig the cape to various existing skeleton bones such as the legs or tail to allow the cape to "move" around while walking/running. This keeps it from being a piece of cardboard rigged to just the neck bone.

 

Example of the cape slightly rigged to the leg bones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNBu1w3Qqjk

 

LHammonds