How to get a frabic to hold its formed shape and still be animation friendly
Im making a gun holster, which IRL would be a hard formed leather that holds its shape. Its sewn to a gunbelt and hangs low off the hip. 
It has two flaps that fold around the gun but there's a small gap in between the two flaps. Ive 'formed' it by sewing to pieces of rigid (frozen) fabric to the flap ends and budged them into place.
here's the two strips, frozen, thats holding the shape together:
The problem Im having is that I cant get it to hold this form once I remove the frozen end strips I used to form it in the first place. Every time I simulate, the gun holster opens up and tries to relax back into the original pattern shape.
Ive tired 'solidify' and 'strengthen'.... while these sorta slow and retard the relaxation, it doesnt actually prevent it. Ive used the Full Grain Leather preset on the material and Ive maxed out the bending weft, warp, and bias values - It still doesnt resist retuning to its pattern shape. The only thing that works is for me to freeze the holster, or keep the frozen form holders in place - but both of these solutions prevent animation simulation. If I was just rendering out stills making statue poses, I wouldnt care - Id just keep using the frozen strips with zeroed out opacity to get it to 'look right'. But I want this to be animation friendly, and thus the frozen strip form holders are a problem.
Ive tried using it as a 'trim' object and 'glue'ing it to the belt. But since you can only have one infinitesimally small glue point, the attachment is not realistic to how its actually attached to the belt.
Can someone tell me if there's any kind of work around to this problem? Or is this just a limitation to Clo in it current state... I feel like we need the ability to establish an 'initial state' of a fabric's deformation once we've formed it so that upon further simulation, it holds this shape but still simulates relative to objects is attached to.
Anyone have any thoughts on how to get this to work and be animation friendly?
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Hi JasonA,
Here where you've applied the frozen strips, would it be an option to add an invisible pattern piece that is sewn onto both of the edges and therefore helps hold the shape?
In exactly those positions marked for both sides, you can add internal lines with angles of around 90° to help keep the correct "flapping" of the shape. If those bends are looking too sharp and you wish for a blunter look, you can add two for every corner, very near to each other, and play with the angles until the corner looks smoother.
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Thanks for these suggestions, Ill give them a try!
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