The Maharaja's New Clothes

The clothing worn by people in this period and part of India consisted largely of salwar-kameezes and kurtas. This form of clothing is extremely difficult to animate in 3D, so I am working with two options:

1. Use a cloth simulation -- difficult, but nice secondary motion
   
2. Stylize the cloth and rig it -- easier technically, but may look too stiff
   

I got some great advice from Mark de Sousa of Sony Imageworks, who suggested that I use a combination of bones and deformers to rig the clothing if I choose not to do a simulation. But he felt that cloth simulation would still be better overall if I could fit it into my production schedule, and liked this test that I did using Maya's new nCloth system.



I'm still deciding, but am leaning towards rigging the cloth because I already have my hands full with technical issues and cloth is known to be tricky. Still, I'll keep working with the cloth simulations for a bit longer.


In addition, Christine Panushka suggested that I differentiate the clothing between the Hindus and the Muslims more, instead of relying solely on colour. Now, the people from this time would wear similar clothing, so it'll be tricky to do so, but maybe I can give the Hindus shorter kurtas or a waistband or something.