# Spring-Mass Meshes & Cloth

**Track:** Simulation & Complexity — Advanced Creative Coding — proposed (50)
**Framework / surface:** p5.js
**Level:** Hard
**Prerequisites:** Verlet Integration & Constraints, Springs & Constraints

**In one line:** Structural/shear/bend springs; tearing.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

A cloth is a lattice of point masses joined by springs obeying Hooke's law. Three spring types give fabric its character: structural springs along the weave resist stretch, shear springs across the diagonals resist skew, and bend springs spanning two cells resist folding. Xavier Provot's 1995 model tempers spring superelasticity by clamping over-stretched links, the same relaxation logic Thomas Jakobsen later popularized for real-time use. Sever a link past a strain threshold and the sheet tears, propagating runs along lines of tension. The result reads as drape and gravity made visible — folds that gather, ripples that travel, fabric that catches and releases as it moves.