You can apply Rigidity and Deform Resistance to the individual polygon shells that make up your nCloth mesh. The Use Polygon Shells attribute enables Rigidity and Deform Resistance on each shell allowing them to behave as individual rigid objects.

When Use Polygon Shells is on, there are no self-collisions within each shell. To maintain the rigidity of the individual shells, ensure that the nCloth object's Rigidity and/or Deform Resistance is set to a high enough value. Smaller shells need higher Rigidity or Deform Resistance.

There are two typical workflows that you can use for simulating rigid nCloth shells: use combined polygon objects or Paint Effects strokes.

To create rigid nCloth shells from combined polygons

1. Model the individual polygon objects.
2. Combine the objects into a single mesh using Mesh > Combine.
3. Convert the combined polygon object to nCloth by selecting nMesh > Create nCloth.
4. In the Dynamic Properties section of the nClothshape node Attribute Editor, set Rigidity or Deform Resistance to the desired positive value. see Rigidity and Deform Resistance.
5. Turn on Use Polygon Shells. See Use Polygon Shells.

   When simulated, each shell behaves as a separate rigid nCloth object.

To create rigid nCloth shells from Paint Effects strokes

1. Select a Paint Effects brush and create strokes in your scene.
2. Convert the Paint Effects stroke to a polygon object by selecting Modify > Convert > Paint Effects to Polygons.

   Each Paint Effects stroke is converted to an individual polygon object.

3. Convert the polygons to an nCloth object and set nCloth attributes as describes in steps 4 to 6 above.