Why Clothes Explode After Cloth&Collision Modifier?

[MrBundy]

I'm trying to use cloth physics with a Makehuman character in Blender, but after applying cloth for cloth and collision for the body the clothes wiggle and or "explode" insanely?

[Oscalon]

This is due to intersections in the cloth materials and lock of proper pinning. Cloth sim is very fragile and only works under perfect conditions. Unless you make an outfit specifically for it, it doesn't work. MakeHuman clothes are designed to work with bone deformation, and so are not built to work with cloth.

If you want to get cloth sim working with makehuman clothes, the best approach would be to set up a simplified Deformer object, run the cloth sim on that, and have it deform the MakeHuman clothes. If you want to try this, search google or look on BlenderArtists for info on setting up deformers.

[MrBundy]

Well, This does not look easy at all.

[Oscalon]

I'm afraid blender cloth sim is very tedious to learn and use. It is also not very good overall, as it has not been updated in a long time. This is why it is not the standard. Blender cloth is good enough for flags or drapes, but is too inaccurate and slow for complex clothing. I suggest skipping cloth sim unless you have access to more modern sim software, such as Marvelous Designer or plugins for Maya or Max.

Blender cloth is likely going to be updated soon as part of the Gooseberry project, so hopefully that will modernize it.

[MrBundy]

Oh no! Well, I have to stick with the basic bone/cloth deforming for now. I just got too excited when I saw this in Youtube: http://youtu.be/t9qHg-NrGOY

But, I think that it is very simple piece of cloth in this case then. Making still photos and wrinkles there is some use for the cloth modifier...

[wolgade]

Cloth simulation like the one you see in the video indeed works pretty well, but if you look closely you'll notice a quite large gap between the upper part of the skirt and the body. It's the result of a fairly high distance setting in the cloth collision tab. High distance settings generally make the simulation more stable, but the result is quite unrealistic like in the video. Low distance settings increase the risk of simulation going nuts.

A workaround could be to use a solidify modifier after cloth simulation to make the gap smaller. Real clothes have a thickness.

[duststorm]

Clothing simulation in Blender is pretty rudimentary.
I'd not expect it to work with complex clothes.

Also, to me it only looks like it works with very light types of fabric, like silk. It'll be hard to get convincable looking cotton, leather or jeans materials out of it.
I don't think blender's cloth sim has changed much in the last 4 years. 4 Years ago it might have been considered to be high end, now it has gotten a bit behind.