The Three Coolest Things About Havok Cloth

by Jonathan Zungre on March 8, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Have you ever noticed how video game characters wear a lot of tight clothing? It’s not because they’re sexy, it’s because loose clothing is hard to make look realistic.

In the past, animators have achieved limited success by adding more “bones” to their character’s animations in the shape of things like capes or dresses. While the character walks, the cape has a canned animation, like the walk itself. And therein lies the problem — the cape may have only a couple animations, and they will look unrealistic in many situations.

Havok wants to mend this situation through realistic simulations of environmental cloth and character clothing. These are the guys who made it possible for you to see your Master Chief flop like a rag-doll off a ledge after being pwned, so listen up.

1. Havok Cloth can simulate all different types of cloth accurately.

The demo I saw began with a line of hanging strips of different cloth materials such as silk, satin, burlap, leather and even chain-link. A hard stone roller then passed through each piece of cloth, showing how each reacts differently when passing over a hard material. Leather and chain-link remained rigid while satin and silk flowed, danced and almost took the form of the stone roller.

2. Havok Cloth Produces More Human Hotties.

Havok ponytail
Your ponytail is the end of me!

For too long, the only thing that bounced erratically on gaming girls is their boobies. Havok showed us how capes, dresses and even trousers flow and flutter realistically on character models with Havok Cloth, but even more interesting was the simulation of a female’s long ponytail.

While she ran, it would bounce, and when she stopped, it would occasionally and endearingly flop onto her chest like a ponytail should. It was freaking adorable. It’s amazing how a little touch like that can give a character so much more personality and life. I mean, I know I’ve fallen in love with a girl who had a ponytail that flopped exactly like that.

There’s something magical about unscripted moments in gaming. It’s a moment’s unpredictable and unique nature that makes it special. It’s the fact that her ponytail wouldn’t have done that 9 times out of 10, but on the 10th time it did. Havok Cloth makes these unscripted moments possible.

3. Many wobbly bellies now a possibility:

Lastly, the guys from the demo said that Havok Cloth had the ability to simulate lots of realistic wobbly bellies. They did not, however, show a big wobbly belly in the demo. I really believe they should have taken a tip from the Unreal 3 engine’s wobbly “meat cube” section of their demo and included a wobbling belly for at least a gratuitous 15 minutes straight.

That’ll move some product.

havok Sumo

Wobbly bellies own.

Developers, what more do you need? Buy yourselves some Havok Cloth and give us some sweet games! You can have hot ponytails and wobbly bellies! Actually, many of you already have those. Realistic leather outfits then?

Check out all the Havok Cloth videos here.

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