Solution to my nCloth woes: instead of doing a general edge->edge constraint, everything is now vertex to vertex. There's a few tricky spots around the tips of the wings where it's been fly-awaying, because I messed up during a retopologize back in October, and it's much too late to redo anything now. But, that's brought under control so no worries.
I needed to pin the elbow/membrane, which I've done with a block of nConstraints. The elbow pin can be moved around to accommodate for changes in the elbow rotation, which means I have control over the membrane stretching.
Also, fixed the disappearing constraint issue. It was a rigid body that was being created when I made the initial constraints, which was interfering with an existing one I'd already placed on the model before going into nCloth.
Deleted them both, remade the constraints, and now I can safely reference the .ma file without having to worry about cloth dynamics going astray.
Also, dynamics test for Charlene's fashionable new scarf. I can't get rid of the poly collision because the rigid bodies and the nHair don't recognize one another. So counter animating will be necessary.
