Ah... *

Conception: Continuing to explore cloth physics in Blender.

Method: Load Rachel model into XPS, apply a pose which requires a simple dress adjustment, save the pose. Import model in Blender, import modified pose into Blender, apply physics engine, watch results. Share.

Commentary: After the last one I'm a bit closer to finding the right way of using the physics engine in Blender for my purposes. As can be seen, the dress now falls neatly over her legs and shapely bottom. *Ahem* The mesh merging technique holds from the previous shared effort so I'm pleased with that. There is still an outstanding issue that I have been aware of for some time now, and to really make this work will require addressing it. Can you (yes, you) see the issue?

I used pinning to hold the top of the dress in place. However, it doesn't really quite stay in place. There are gaps emerging as the animation progresses further along. I think there are a couple of ways to try and resolve this.

(1) Join the dress mesh to the body mesh.
(2) Using the newly learnt ability of combining meshes of adding the dress mesh to a nude model.

I suspect (1) will be problematic for the physics engine application. The only way this could work is if a part of a mesh can be rigid and another part as cloth. I have my doubts this would work, but I'll give it a try at some point.

(2) requires a fair bit of fiddling about and finding the correct nude model for this to work. This way the dress will conform to the body more and retain the separate nature of the body and dress for the physics engine. I suspect this is the way forward.

I really should dispair at the idea I'm doing things with no idea of what it is I'm actually doing...


Credits:
Rachel model via XNALara-Fanatic
Pose by elDM
Blender 2.77a
Windows Snipping Tool
Assets/Copyright: Koei Tecmo

1st July 2017

P.S. I tried (1) using two planes - one as a rigid body, the other as cloth. Merged them together and it doesn't work. Looks like I'll have to use a variation of pinning or find a suitable nude model to actually wear the dress and do things that way. At this rate I'll never get to the pose I want to do...