Suggestion / Idea Subtitles in the solver constraints list

[josemendez]

Hi!
It doesn't need to be like that at the middle of secctions and it doenst need to be outstanding, it's to be more clear if while testing what I'm enabling/disabling makes any sense for what i'm using

That's a good idea, thanks!

Let's say for example I disable volume constraint, nothing happens with my cloths but as soon as I disable skin constraint something unespected happen and it's not clear for me that cloths can work without volume constraint but not without skin constraint.

It depends on what you want to do. Volume and Skin constraints are both used by cloth, and only by cloth. However, Skin constraints are used for skinned cloth, and volume constraints for closed cloth meshes. So even though both would have the cloth subtitle right next to it, the devil is in the details. A regular cloth can work without either, a skinned cloth can work without volume but not without skin.

I had an experience with rods, for performance and art feeling I started decreasing particles mass and interactions, I ended up with a strange non-sense zig-zag shape on the rods, so ok, I started disabling/enabling constraints to see what happens (no clue if it's for rods or not) and disabling stretch shear resolved the zigzag problem. If I knew that plays with rods I could go to it at first

I get it, so I will definitely add subtitles in the next update. For this specific case you mention though, stretch/shear should always be used for rods (specially when not using chain constraints as well), as they strive to keep the rod's length. Without them the rod will stretch a lot. The zig-zag patterns appear when using sequential evaluation, as it's order-dependent:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutor...olver.html

In Sequential mode, all constraints are evaluated in the order they were created (which is determined by each specific ObiActor) and each constraint “sees” the adjustments made by all previous constraints.  It is order-dependent, so in low-budget situations (few iterations and/or large timesteps) this can result in visible patterns in particle arrangement.

Constraints are divided in batches for efficient parallelization. In rods and ropes, all even constraints are updated first, then all odd constraints. So odd constraints always have a slight "advantage" so to speak, as they are evaluated last, and this makes zig-zag patterns visible. In parallel mode, even and odd constraints are evaluated separately and their contributions averaged in a second pass, so order is not important. This order-dependency is also mentioned and demonstrated here: http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutor...gence.html

So in case of visible patterns, using more iterations and/or parallel mode is the correct solution.