Alongside the visual development, I began technical R&D in Cinema 4D to understand how the scarf could move through the environment.
The main challenge was combining believable cloth behaviour with a controlled path.
I tested several different setups involving:
- Cloth
- Cloth Cache
- Align to Spline
- Spline Wrap
- Fold
- Turbulence
- squash and stretch
Initially, directly combining the cloth object with the spline-based deformation caused problems.
The setup that eventually worked was:
NULL_TRAVEL
→ CONNECT / intermediate mesh with Spline Wrap
→ cached Cloth plane
The Align to Spline was then applied to the travelling null.
This allowed me to preserve the cloth simulation while still moving and deforming the scarf along a controlled spline.
This was one of the most successful technical tests during the summer because it proved that the scarf could remain physically expressive while still following the camera and narrative path I needed.
Here are some videos of the various tests: