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
When simulated, each shell behaves as a separate rigid nCloth object.
To create rigid nCloth shells from Paint Effects strokes
Each Paint Effects stroke is converted to an individual polygon object.