A newer item from Kelseus, based on the same core technology as the plug-in, is the Cloth En gine, an SDK now available for licensing to developers. The en gine includes collision detection/rectification, which re cognizes all cloth geo metry that collides with an object, detecting and rectifying vertex, edge, and face collisions to increase the quality of simulation and reduce production time. Also incorporated is a Solver, which uses the Bar aff and Witkin cloth simulation model (published in 1998). Kelseus has also developed new, faster algorithms for calculating internal forces, and a custom timing mechanism that synchronizes the Cloth En gine to the frame rate of the scene determined by the user. This produces clean frames of animation when characters wearing cloth rapidly change frame rate.
Prices for the Cloth Engine vary according to licensing agreement. The 3ds max plug-in costs $450. (Kelseus; www.kelseus.com) -JD