(2023-03-05, 14:03)N. W. Perry Wrote: My takeaway from this is that what we really need on the LDraw side is less about actual cloth simulation and more about the 3D vertex modification. I wonder if there’s anything in that part of the Blender code that would be suitable for modeling dynamic flat flexible parts in an LDraw editor?
Yes. The mesh editor is very nice and lets you switch between arbitrary polygons, triangles, and quads pretty easily. I've also exported some test parts using this plugin: https://github.com/cuddlyogre/ExportLDraw although the project setup is still a little fiddly, the maintainer is quite responsive to issues.
Anyway, I've wrapped up the (non-official-model) project I was working on and ended up modeling 3/4 of the Pirates of Barracuda Bay sails (and the two that are reused I formed in both poses). I didn't end up using the triangular sail and I'm not quite sure that the spacing between my foremast and bowsprit are the same as in PoBB, so I left it undone, but if anyone wants to pick up from my work, this Google Drive folder, contains:
- High-resolution scans of all 4 original fabric sail shapes
- Polygonal traces of 3 of the 4 original fabric sail shapes as .blend files
- A sample project showing how to rig the unformed sails into formed sails.
- Both formed and unformed exported meshes as .obj (although only the small quadrilateral sail has also been simplified and placed in a canonical orientation)
Given that I have relatively limited hobby time these days, I suspect I won't finish the work myself, but thought someone else might find this a useful resource in the future.