Newbie problems with cloth

[thorneagain]

Hello again everyone. I am having some problems with cloth, and since you guys were all so helpful with my previous inquiries, I've decided to see if you can help me again. When I attempt to create a cloth panel from a closed curve (The attribute window refers to it as "Closed", not periodic or open, so that should mean that it's closed, right?) I get an error in my little help bar that says, "Error: Curves must form a closed loop. Check for unconnected or extra curves". This is quite strange, as I do indeed have a closed curve. I'm afraid that the "f1" help has been of little use. If anyone here can tell me anything about this, I would be greatly appreciative.

[k-hofler]

Hmmm It seems the same question is repeated..Well did you know a few days ago I've answered the same question exactly the same so try searching in the last 3 days articles to see your answers for your question.

Any way I will write my answer but hopefully the others will so for me I've tried themethod that was mentioned in the help but with know use and becasue I am still a newbie so I've tried every possible way like snap to points but the same problem persist and after thinking I found my way. first of all you should make a half garment then you should mirror it and fil along the Y-axis so take the front view and draw your outlines for a half of your cloth but the beginig and ending points on the curve should lie exactly on the Y-axis black line by using snap to grid then if your points are on the grid you can move them up or down because we are going to filp the copy around Y-axis so make an instance of your cloth and flip it around Y-axis and because the new instance will appear on the origin and your outlines are within the origin so select both of curves and make a panel and have a better live

[jawa9000]

I'm having the same problem. I even created a nurbs circle just to test it and it still doesn't work giving me the same error (not closed...). Next I created 4 curves all with the snap to grid turned on in the front view. Still same result after I attach each curve. Again, after the error, I Open/Close curve and still doesn't work.
Err?

[gmask]

A panel has to be created from two or more cruves. When they say closed they mean that the end points of each adjacent curves touch one another. These curves also have to be coplanar or flattened.

[jawa9000]

I have done that. Everything is co-planar, closed nurbs curves it still doesn't work. I'm beginning to think that there's something buggy with my copy of Maya. I have a few books that talk about how to create cloth from scratch and read several things online and nothing works unless I use a nurbs or poly objects.

[gmask]

Do this.. create a new scene. Create 4 ep curves by snapping each of the endpoints on a grid in an orthographic view. The last point is the starting point of the next curve. Then select all 4 curves and create panel.

[fortner_mike]

I have a link where I created a cloth garment. the front set of curves, is actually made out of 20 seperate curves, but the end of each curve is attached to the begging of the next curve. It is also important that the curves are all going in the same direction. Hopefully you my screen grab will help you out in visualizing this concept. A good example of this would be to create a poly plane, duplicate surface curves (just the four outer ones, so you have 4 curves that are intersecting each other) then create a panel out of that. Hope this helps.
www.mikefortner.com/pages/emmitt.htm

[user_deleted]

If you are selecting the curves from the viewport, then check that you dont have duplicate curves existing in the same place. I know it might sound a bit obvious, but it caught me out a few times.

check in the outliner or with a Mel script that you only have the right number of curves

[cgiexpert]

1) Use snap when creating curves (lines)
2) Snap curves to grid
3) Create one curve at a time (one line / one curve).
4) Press hotkey 'y' after you create each curve
5) Create EP curves (not CV)
6) Keep curves on the same plane

I'm kind of new to this also, but this is how I do it, and its been working pretty okay for me.