use maya Cloth or Model and hand animate??

# 1 10-06-2003 , 09:12 PM

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Join Date: Jun 2003

Location: stuck in the 90's boston, USA

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we have a big project coming up, and ther will be several characters on screen at one tim, i have 2 questions
1) does maya or mental ray (or even renderman) calculate only what is viewable in a given camera when rendering, or are there other things the renderers calculate even if they are not viewable?
2) what is best, use maya cloth (which we have never used) to get realistic results and have a dynamic interaction between characters and other objects; OR should i model the clothes and hand animate them and deform them, whihch i do not want to do, since there will be extensive shots where the characters are moving onn screen.

---- we are using dual SGI 320's and HP x-class running dual PIIIs

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# 2 10-06-2003 , 09:31 PM

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Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: USA

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1) So... you're asking what all the renderer calculates then right? Well, depending on what format you choose when you batch render will decide whether or not an alpha channel is included. Targas have these. (and are a high-quality image as well in case you didn't know) Maya's renderer can calculate a z-depth channel, too.

I don't exactly understand your question though. When you render, the only thing you're going to see in the frame is your geometry. Things like lattices, curves, and skeletons will not show up.

2) I myself would recommend creating the cloth and animating it yourself if you've never used cloth dynamics. It can take some time to learn. Maybe someone else can offer you some more insight since I don't animate all that much.

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