Dforce on All Clothes and Hair?
Richard John S
Posts: 391
Can you use Dforce on all clothes? Can you use it on hair as well? If so, how do you set it up?
Post edited by Richard John S on
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No you can't use it on hair. It is for clothing only. It is only for clothing. It will work on some older clothing but some it screws up on.
Clothes are supported, some hair works even though it isn't officially supported yet, and read the sticky thread dForce - Start here. There is a lot of useful information in that thread, though after the first post,it's mostly not relevant for end users.
The first post is more "user guide" while the following posts are more "reference guide"; what properties exist, where they are located, what their purpose is, how they are used.
I tried it on hair and worked quite well, it still needs to be tewaked though!
Although dForce does work on some Hair items and there is at least an implication in the "Start here" post for dForce that dForce can work on any single mesh, dForce is not currently intended to work on hair and the Devs have confirmed (via a help request) that applying dForce to Hair items might cause DS to crash.
Hopefully a later release of dForce will include specific support for Hair items. Personally I'm not sure what the difference is, maybe something to do with rigging? I guess we have some more waiting to do.
It's not the rigging, it's the mesh itself. The clothes that dForce works on (no exploding, no falling apart) whether new and bought with dForce settings or older with the settings applied manually, have the mesh built in a particular way. Hair models are much more likely to have problems with this, so any attempt to use dForce on the hair will fail. Some hairs will work, but that's because their mesh just happens to be made the right way.
When you say "have the mesh built in a particular way" could you be a bit more specific? Are you referring to quads or triangles, or other polygons? Or specific mesh shapes? This could be useful in making a simple conversion process (providing it doesn't take too much time).
Pitty!
just got the reply that there is no support for clothing not certified for dForce.
So it's no use to report about failures.
All parts supposed to stick together must be welded, for one thing. If you have modeled pockets and they are not welded to the main mesh they will fall apart, for example.
Another problematic thing is intersecting parts in the mesh.
There are certainly other criteria, but those two are the main ones I can see causing problems with hair.
The hair I've been testing dForce on works just fine, but there's just no "one click" solution. You have to put some effort into it, though it's not really a lot.
Load the hair you want to use (I've been using the longer hair, like Charm, Persephone, Elegance, and Lustrous, which have limited basic functionality), and open the Tool Settings pane, then select the Geometry Editor.
Expand the Surfaces option in the Tool Settings pane and hide all but one Surface which you intend to apply dForce to (i.e. Wisps, Top, Base, whatever you want to start with).
Set your preview window's display mode to Hidden Line so you can see the mesh, and make sure the visible Surface is the selected item (you'll see a red "ghost" of another item if not).
The Geometry Editor has 3 selection styles - drag (paint brush), Lasso, and Marquee, which is just a box-type selection. Pick whichever one you're good with, though you can use all 3. Use Ctrl+Left Click to add to what's already selected, or Alt+Left Click to subtract.
Select the areas of the given hair piece you want to apply dForce to. If you select the entire item, it will fall apart completely. If you leave just the tips at the top (I select all but the top 2 or 3 rows of the mesh) then those will act as "anchors" and the rest will work fine.
Once you've got the areas you want selected, go to the little box submenu up near the top of the tool panel and select Geometry Assignment>Create Surface From Selected.
Name this whatever, but I name it for the source piece and add Dyn to it so I know that's the Dynamic version of the given surface (i.e. TopDyn if it's taken from the Top, BangsDyn if it's taken from the Bangs, etc).
You can split a hair product's various layers into as many different additional Surfaces as you think you will want or need for dForce. It's up to you. More options means more control. Since most hairs also have a solid back piece, which is highly unrealistic, you might want to split that up into at least 2 halves. This way when your figure bends over, if the hair is supposed to separate and go over each shoulder, it will.
I don't touch the skullcap. It's not going to need dynamics.
When you're making your selections, remember that everything has to have an anchor point to keep from falling apart, so select everything except the roots.
Once you've got all your new Surfaces created for each layer of the hair, you will have to Copy and Paste the original Materials to them, since the original Material preset does not include those new Surfaces you created. That's the easy part.
Apply the dForce Modifier to the Hair. It will apply to all Hair Surfaces. Set the Dynamics of all the base Surfaces (the roots) to 0, so they don't fall apart.
The thing to understand about dynamic Hair is that the system itself is set by default to make everything behave like the thinnest and lightest material it can possibly simulate. If you click Simulate at this point, you will lose all body to the hair, it will spring up and down as it settles, and any waves or curls will stretch out and look bad.
You have to have some understanding of how real hair behaves, and, depending on the final results you're going for, how styled hair behaves (styling mousse, hair spray, or wild and free).
TV is good for this, like the weather channel, because they actually move around more than your local TV news anchor. It depends on what you're after.
Then again, real life is just as good. Pay attention to how real hair behaves in various real life, everyday movements of the head and body. See how much it does (and doesn't) bounce, depending on the style.
There are limits to the dForce simulation with hair, mostly having to deal with how it sticks to the figure in certain places. I don't know if this is the collision offset or what, but when you've got a figure leaning over and hair is sticking to the chest when it should be hanging straight down is very annoying. I'm still working on figuring how to correct that.
At any rate, the settings will determine the behavior of the hair, just like it does for cloth.
Hair doesn't Stretch like elastic, so set the Stretch resistance really high, like 0.8 (since 1.0 is the limit). If not, as soon as the simulation starts, your hair will fall flat and stretch and spring and bounce too much, losing its base shape. However, setting it too high will remove all bounce from curls.
Hair also doesn't fold sharply on itself like cloth, so set the Buckling Stiffness to about 30% or more.
Double the Density to at least 360 to start (default 180), because while hair is thin, it's not quite that thin and watery. I don't even think water is that thin.
Set the Damping to about 0.3 as well, and that should take care of any "nervous shakes" your hair has.
Run the Sim and you should be able to tweak the various settings from there.
Like clothing, hair morphs will be retained during the sim, so if you've got it moved off the chest, the simulation won't drop it back down to where it was. However, if your sim starts off with a piece of the hair inside the body of the figure it's on, it will stick there, so move it just over the body surface.
While it would be easier to have a 1-button hair solution, don't hold your breath, especially in regards to what you've already bought, Your best option is to learn how to use the Geometry editor as described here.
Thanks for the detailed analysis, DrNewcenstein. Lots of food for thought there.
Congrats to DAZ for finally being able to offer dynamic clothing with dForce. I skimmed through the Start Here thread, and remain totally confused. It would be nice to have a section for Total Newbies. My first question is whether we'd want to buy clothing specifically made for dForce? Would you have a new "dForce compatible" section of the store? I remember many years ago I was sold on Dynamic clothing in Poser. But I found almost no dynamic clothing available. I will likely remain totally confused until someone provides a more basic explanation.
If you buy dForce complaint clothing it shoudl eb set up and working, older clothing may or may not work and may require a degree of fiddling to get working if it's possible.
If you've already sunk a ton of money into Genesis 2 and haven't bought into Genesis 3/8 yet, you're probably going to only find dForce-ready clothing for 3 and 8.
And of course if you've also sunk a ton of money into clothing for Genesis 2, it won't be updated to, or re-released as, dForce-ready.
When/If the Dynamic Hair starts rolling in, expect to pay out even more for all new products.
Looks like a new marketing strategy
Which is fair enough - entitled to make a few bucks on products after investing in some pretty cool software that's available for free
When you're done with your scene in Daz, export everything as obj.
In Marvelous Designer : Import the character alone as avatar. And import cloth & hair as garments. Simulate the cloths one by one to avoid too heavy computations.
It gives great result and so much faster.