Panel Cloth

Panel Cloth can generate cloth simulation really quickly on selected faces. It was made to create cloth padding mixed with hard surface models but can be used in many different ways beyond its intended design.

Figure 1

This also has worfklows that deals with setting up object collision and pinning vertices. Both are easy to set up and use.

Here are the redo properties and what they do:

Split Mode

This has three options: None, Seam and Angle. Seam will split the mesh on edges that you have marked with uv seams. Angle will split the mesh on sharp angled edges based on an angle threshold.

Figure 2

Cut Angle

This shows up when Split Mode: Angle is used. This determines the angle by which an edge can be split using the Split Mode property.

Cloth Seed

Randomizes cloth properties using a min/max value with a seed number. These properties are Mass, Pressure, Shrink and Gravity and when using Mode: Random.

Figure 3

Bake Frames

How many frames are used for the cloth simulation.

Figure 4

Mode

This has two options: Random and Uniform. This affects the properties: Mass, Pressure, Shrink and Gravity. Random will use a min/max value for these properties with Uniform only using a single value.

Figure 5

Mass

This determines the mass of the cloth. Modify this to increase the effect of gravity.

Figure 6

Pressure

Pressure that is applied to the mesh or cloth.

Figure 7

Shrink

Factor by which to shrink the cloth.

Figure 8

Gravity

Gravity weight on the mesh or cloth.

Figure 9

Margin

Creates a margin on the selected faces' boundary edges. This does not work if the entire mesh is selected.

Figure 10

Subdivision

This has two properties: Cuts and Smooth. Cuts determines the amount of subdivision to increase the resolution of the source mesh. Smooth determines the amount of smoothing applied on the subdivided mesh.

Figure 11

Noise

This has two properties: Fractal and Normal. Fractal is the amount of noise applied on the subdivided mesh. Normal is how much the noise is directed towards the face normals of the source mesh. These properties are connected to the Subdivision property above and will only work if the cut value is above zero.

Fiture 12

Noise Seed

Randomizes the fractal noise using a seed number.

Figure 13

Subsurf Level

This is the level of the subsurf modifier added to the resulting cloth sim mesh after the operation.

Figure 14

It has no effect on the amount of faces used by the cloth simulation since the subsurf modifier is added after the script has done all its major operations.

Material Index

The Material Index property lets the resulting cloth sim mesh inherit a material from the active or work mesh.

The default value of -1 means it will use the active material in the work mesh if that material exists.

Using 0 and above means you will be using the 1st material in the material stack when using 0, the 2nd material when using 1 and so forth.

Using a material stack number when that material does not exist will assign no material to the resulting panel cut mesh.

Use Mirror

Use the mirror modifier of the source mesh or work on a cloth sim based on the applied version of the work mesh.

Figure 15

When turned off, this creates additional overhead for some higher resolution meshes because it will work on a copy of the mesh where the mirror modifier is applied.

Flip Normals

Reverses the normal of the face selection or the source mesh.

Figure 16

Shade Smooth

Shades smooth the face selection or the source mesh.

Figure 17

Individual Seed

Uses a seed number to randomize the cloth simulation of separate cloth islands split using the Split Mode property or with face selection.

Figure 18

Remove Faces

Removes the face selection. If all of the faces of the source mesh is selected then that object is removed from the scene.

Figure 19

Object Collisions

Enables object collision. This is triggered by multiple selection with the active object being the source mesh where the cloth sim is generated and the rest of the selection used for collision.

Figure 20

Collide To Source

Allows the cloth mesh to collide on the source mesh. This toggle appears only if Object Collisions is enabled.

Self Collision

Allows the cloth mesh to collide with itself. This generates additional overhead so be careful. This toggle appears only if Object Collision is enabled.

Pin

Use pin or vertex group to hold vertices in place.

Figure 21

Preserve Corner Pin

Preserves pinning of sharp corner vertices based on an angle threshold.

Figure 22

This only works when using the mark sharp feature of the operator.

Angle

Maximum angle threshold for vertices to keep pinning.

Mark Sharp Feature

This feature involves marking edges as sharp using the Ctrl+E hotkey menu in edit mode to open the edge special menu then using the mark sharp operator.

It has two (2) behaviors that's enabled when the edges you have marked are boundary edges or not.

if the edges you have marked as sharp are not boundary edges then the cloth sim is pinched at those edges. This is different from using the Split Mode: Seams which cuts the cloth mesh at those edges instead creating another face island or group.

Figure 23

When the marked edges are boundary or nonmanifold edges, the cloth mesh is unpinned from the vertices in those edges.

Figure 24

Pinning will be preserved on vertices that meets the Preserve Corner Pin's Angle threshold.

This feature will allow you to create hanging cloth effects like capes or flags. Turn off Preserve Corner Pin to unpin the cloth mesh from sharp angled vertices.

Figure 25

Experiment with the topology and what edges you mark to get the most of this feature.

Figure 26