Reply To: How separte clothes for Animatoion?

[Kent Trammell]

One thing you will learn about Blender / 3D is how relative every task of the workflow becomes. There’s rarely one complete answer for a 3D question.

 Is it recommendable to retropology the clothes then?

Retopology is merely a method of achieving clean, even topology according to the template of another shape. Some people prefer to model clothes from scratch with even topology in which case retopology is unnecessary. If you’re sculpting your clothes first, like in the course, then yes, you will need to retopologize clothing for the sake of animation / simulation.

Separate the clothes and delete the body parts that are behind the clothes.

This is what’s taught in the course, which is ideal for a non-moving character. When it comes to animating clothes you will probably want to keep the underlying body model. You can rig clothing to a character so it moves exactly with the body, which is easiest for clothing but not realistic at all. Or you can simulate the cloth behavior which is far more realistic and far more difficult, for which you will need the underlying body model for collisions.

Do you have any recommendation you can give me with this info?

Making an animated short film with a team of professionals is difficult. So you can imagine that for a beginner it’s very difficult. I think my best advice to you is to harness your expectations.

A lot of new 3D artists start off with lofty dreams of making a game or an animated short. I started with this exact goal myself! After a year of working on it I learned a lot about 3D and a lot more about how much I did not know about 3D / film production. The project overwhelmed me and I gave up. In fact I gave up on 3D for a few years. It was a harsh reality to realize.

Hear me: I’m NOT saying this to rain on your parade. Lofty 3D dreams are crucial to an artist’s 3D journey! It’s what makes this kind of work so much fun and fulfilling. Dreams / goals like this still drive me after 15 years. BUT unmet expectations can kill those dreams quickly. I’ve seen too many beginner start out with a big 3D goal, not achieve that goal, then quit 3D all together.

I don’t want that for you. So my advice is to temper your goals for 2021-2022:

• Limit your scope to creating 2 high-quality characters and 1 high quality environment over the next two years. That may sound like a little but keep in mind you will have to create a few poor characters and poor environment assets first to learn about the process before you can apply it in a high quality way.
• Limit your scope by lowering the quality bar in your mind. It’s very possible to create an animated short in two years as a beginner. But the quality will not be high. Maybe that’s OK with you! Maybe you can create a low-quality short and the reward is the experience more than the quality of the final product.

Once again PLEASE do not read this as discouragement. Quite the opposite. I can say these things from deep personal experience because I’ve nurtured a short film dream for many years. I’ve experienced the mountain tops of starting multiple short films only to have them all fade away into the valley of failed attempts.

So if you’re truly driven by the passion to create a short film, your best chance for success is to take it slower than faster. You have to learn to walk before you can run.

PS: One more recommendation: Watch the Piero course if you haven’t yet. Not for the sake of following along but more for a detailed perspective through a production pipeline as a 3D animating working alone. It will give you a lot of insight in to the huge process and hopefully be inspiring.