Defining the behavior of nCloth clothing

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya Unlimited > nCloth > Lesson 3: Creating nCloth Clothing >

Although your dress now fits properly over the character, the dress itself seems to be made of a very heavy material in a very low gravity environment. Ideally, you want the dress to behave like a light weight material such as silk in a gravitational environment similar to our own.

To improve the behavior of the dress

Select the dress.
Open the Attribute Editor and select the nucleus1 tab.
In the Scale Attributes section, set the Space Scale to 0.016.
By reducing the Space Scale attribute, Maya evaluates the large nCloth model as if it were a much smaller object. This will result in a visibly increased gravitational affect on the dress. For more information on Space Scale see Space Scale
Select the nClothShape1 tab and in the Dynamic Properties section set Mass to 0.7.
In the Dynamic Properties section set Stretch Resistance to 140 and Compression Resistance to 120.
By lowering the mass of the cloth, Maya will simulate it as a lighter fabric such as silk.

Increasing the Stretch Resistance and Compression Resistance ensures that the cloth will not become stretched or compressed too greatly as a result of the increased affect of gravity from step 3.
Select nCache > Create New Cache.
Maya automatically plays back the nCloth simulation and saves it to disk as a cache.
Playback the scene.
The dress now behaves more like a light weight material. However, this causes a problem around the breasts where the dress now slips and hangs loose around them rather than over them.