Making capes and hair work, manually and through Cloth Simulation - SWTOR-Slicers/WikiPedia GitHub Wiki

(WIP, by RandomUser, Crunch, and Captain Kodatto the Dashing Hero).

As mentioned in previous guides, SWTOR applies physics simulation bones to character and gear objects such as capes, flaps and other dangling or flowing clothes' parts, and to pieces of hair, too (not just obvious ones such as braids or pigtails but simpler hair objects too). There are files describing such bones, but so far the support we have for automating their creation is very experimental and utterly wonky. So, in this guide we'll show you a few ways to deal with such items, from simply having them minimally follow the character to actually doing a nice work of simulating their behavior.

Weight-painting capes and hair

Weight painting in this case is used in order to move hair and capes of characters with the skeleton. Not all hair types require it to work, but for some it is needed to avoid the hair deforming whenever the head is moved in Pose mode.

It is recommended to do this prior to any posing or loading of SWTOR-animations.

Note that there are separate methods for capes with manual posing and capes with SWTOR-animations.

Hair

Open the mesh in Edit Mode.
Select All (Menu or Press A)
Change to Object Data Properties (Green Upside-Down Triangle) found on the right hand side 'Properties' window.
Select the Head Vertex Group.
Press 'Assign' making sure everything is still selected.
Note: Resetting animation/poses may be required via the Reset Position function on the Skeleton. Refer to Wiki for best practice here. (Credit to: Crunch#0298)

Capes (Manual Posing)

Shift-select the skeleton, then the cape (or whichever object the cape is a part of) while keeping the skeleton selected.
Switch to Weight Paint mode in the top left corner.
Select the “Skirt1” bone with a left-click on it while holding down Control. This bone is located below the Pelvis bone, and will have one bone connected to it further down (Skirt2). It is likely intended for use with long robes and their skirts (like Jedi/Sith robes), but in the absence of those it is free to be used for the cape instead.
With the brush that is automatically selected upon entering Weight Paint Mode, paint the entire cape red. Make sure you paint it completely from both sides, and that you do not paint any part of the object that is not a part of the cape, because otherwise it will be moved with the cape, and we don’t want that.
You’re done! In pose mode, you can now use the Skirt1 bone to move the skirt around. Note that the cape won’t be deformed by physics in any way, so wind etc. will not have any effect.

Capes (SWTOR-Animations)

Shift-select the skeleton, then the cape (or whichever object the cape is a part of) while keeping the skeleton selected.
Switch to Weight Paint mode in the top left corner.
Select the “Pelvis” bone with a left-click on it while holding down Control.
With the brush that is automatically selected upon entering Weight Paint Mode, paint the entire cape red. Make sure you paint it completely from both sides, and that you do not paint any part of the object that is not a part of the cape, because otherwise it will be moved with the cape, and we don’t want that.
You’re done! If you now load a SWTOR-animation to this skeleton, the cape will be moved with the rest of the character correctly.

Capes (Blender Cloth Simulation)

Make sure the cape is parented to the armature. This will make later steps easier.
Go into Edit mode and remove overlapping vertices by selecting all vertices (A) and using the F3 menu to type in ‘Merge By Distance’
In the modifiers tab for the cape mesh, activate ‘Display modifier in Edit mode’ and ‘Adjust edit cage to modifier result’
Go into pose mode on the armature, and move the rig off to one side. The vertices that will be simulated should stay where they are.
Leave pose mode, and go into Edit mode on the mesh. The mesh shouldn’t move when doing this.
Go into wireframe view (Z -> Wireframe) and make sure all vertices are deselected (Alt+A)
Box select (B) all the vertices that you DON’T want to simulate (this will be the section of the mesh that moved along with the armature. Typically, the non-cape areas of the mesh.)
Go into the Object Data Properties tab and add a new vertex group. Call it something memorable (e.g. ClothPinGroup)
With the vertices selected, click ‘Assign’.
We can now deactivate the buttons we clicked in Step 3.
Go into Pose mode on the armature, select all the bones (A) and move them back to the origin (Alt + G)
Click on the mesh, and go into the Physics Properties tab
Select ‘Cloth’ and under the ‘Shape’ heading, click on ‘Pin Group’ and find the vertex group you created previously.
The cape should now simulate whilst the rest of the mesh will stay put.

Some important things to note are self-collisions, collision distance distance, object scale, and interaction with the Subdivision modifier.

Without self-collision, the cape will phase through itself and simulate unrealistically. This can be enabled under the ‘Collisions’ heading in the physics tab.

The default collision distance of 0.015 m, in my experience, seems to be a bit too big if only scaling the meshes up 10x. Dividing these values by 10 seems to work better, but experimenting with these values yourself may prove better.

In relation to object scale, SWTOR’s assets import at a very small scale. This can be troublesome with Blender’s cloth simulations and may not work entirely. For the most part, scaling the meshes up by a factor of 10 seems to resolve these issues, but scaling by 100 temporarily may produce better results.

If you are applying a Subdivision modifier to the mesh, it may be best to have it below the Cloth modifier in the modifier stack. This helps to keep the simulation quick if you are wanting to view it in realtime whilst still producing a nice looking result. However, if you aren’t concerned with speed then placing it before can produce more accurate results.