Making Your First Model Part 20
I can’t Physics 2, Please Help Me

Well, that was over the skirt plugin. This is mashing together things in hopes of it turning out well.

I mean, I’m sure Animasa didn’t have the skirt plugin in the long ago age of . . . a few years ago?

Let’s examine the default Luka model in MMD and hope we don’t get a night fever. (Eh? Eh??)

So, those are the bodies connected to Luka’s skirt. They all have slightly different joint and body properties.

With the skirt plugin, you get a ton of joints. With Luka, you get seven.

Now . . . Here’s a reason to worry. With everything except her skirt masked so that we could see where the skirt was weighted…

… we can see that the upper part of her skirt is weighted to her legs. And as soon as I saw that, I realized why I just didn’t like her physics.

Luka’s skirt is as A-Line as A-Line gets. It hugs her hips until it gets lower and barely flares out a bit.

Luka doing the splits in the air

I . . . was going to make a point . . . and then I realized how silly that looked and wanted to share it! . . . Oh! Right!

Weighting the skirt to the leg bones successfully keeps her legs from popping through. However . . . Can we do that to Camila? Or more so, can we weight her hips to her legs and then use a method similar to Luka’s skirt for Camila’s skirt?

Well, I drank some coffee and ate a 90 calorie Fiber One bar, so I should be revved up enough to throw things against the wall!

Camila doing splits in the air with no skirt physics

So, let’s talk about The Sims 2. In The Sims 2, when a sim wore a long pencil skirt, their animations didn’t change. Because of that, a dancing sim in certain evening gowns would look silly as their dress stretched in ways that were patently unrealistic. Would that be OK for Camila?

Perhaps if I did a face fill with the bottom of her skirt so that it cut off her legs from view, it would make sense. It would bring attention to the fact that it is, in fact, a 3D model. (As opposed to a Barbie doll in your computer, of course. Barbie never had a face covering the bottom of her skirt!)

And here comes another dilemma. What about her skin poking through her dress?

For Starfire, it was simple. Delete the parts that were poking through her clothes! For the torso, that would work. However . . . For her legs, that wouldn’t. Unless, of course, we put on the bottom of her skirt to block out any looky-loos.

Before we do anything drastic like cutting Camila in half beneath her skirt, let’s look at Luka again to see how to copy her.

There are 14 bones: seven visible, and seven invisible. They are arranged in some kind of circular ring around her. To copy it, we would just need to add seven visible bones, then seven invisible bones. Then we would weight it and add joints.

Four bones linked to invisible bones

Now . . . First we need to weight these bones. Then we need to add bodies and joints. And then we have to hold our breath while we open transform view. If all were to go as planned, we’d have a basis and an idea of where to add more skirt bones. If it doesn’t go as planned… AAARGH! (Happy “Talk like a Pirate” day!)

Camila Bows as her Skirt Does not Cooperate

Seriously? Ok.

Maybe .  . . we just need more physics! And Bones!

. . .

someone please help me.

Ok. Let’s roll back our changes so that she has no skirt physics. But ya’know what could use physics?! Bows!

So, I did it all over again as if it would make any difference!

I made a bone on the ribbon of the bow. I made another one! Then I made an invisible one. Then I selected those bones and made bodies. I made them a different group and didn’t let them collide with their own group.

I adjusted the bodies ever so slightly to make sure it would work . . . and . . .

When it isn’t being sadly sunken into the side of Camila’s hip, it is twitching manically.

Ok. I’m going to mask the dress and the bows.

Then let’s select her midriff . . . press “Shift + Del” . . .

That’s what you get for not playing nice!

Oh . . . What I meant to say was, now I don’t have to do anything extra to not make her skin poke through her dress when she moves her upper body.

Uh . . . This was supposed to be about physics . . . Let’s add an IK bone to the braid?

IK bone not affecting anything

Oh . . . Right . . . I don’t know how to make IK bones . . .

IK Bone in Panel and Not affecting anything

Ok guys.

I should probably just delete this all and study more and write an actual informative thing . . . But you wanna know something that just kills me?

There are basically two tiers. The people who make models, and the people who make edits. The people who make edits will let you know every problem they have putting a new hair on a model’s head . . . but someone who makes models never comes out and says “Hey!! I actually am REALLY CONFUSED about this!”

Everyone runs into the problems people who make edits face. They usually have simple solutions. But the things modelers face? They’re tougher, more confusing . . . and less known.

If I had seen someone else head-desking at skirt physics . . . I wouldn’t feel so alone when I couldn’t get it right.

So this is for all of you out there who think you’re alone when you can’t get your IK bones to do anything.

Next time, I promise, we’ll learn things.

Tune in next time when we learn about facials!