issues with dforce capable flowing dress - falls apart.
Hello All,
I am very new to Daz Studio and I have heard the term 'dforce' being thrown around here and there and from what I gathered it was something related to how hair and dresses behave in relation to wind, gravity, etc. Well, I have created a character and she is wearing a very flowing bohemian style dress that I put together using dforce Wild Winds dress package. When I have my character standing or in a near standing pose, the dress looks good. But having her in a sitting pose, things look off. So I read up more on dforce and came across this tutorial:
I followed these instructions and when I tried it myself it takes nearly as long as a render to complete, and the first time though, it crashed Daz Studio. The second time through the dress just destroyed itself and behaved nothing like in the video demonstration (see attached photo).
Naturally being new, I believe I am doing something wrong here so I would like to know what I could do to rectify this issue. Also is there a faster way of getting results? Is there a way that I could manually adjust dforce items to fine tune it?
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Edit: I been at this for most of the day and I doing more research, it seems if the dress collides with something such as the floor during the simulation, it will cause the issue. So I tried a couple standing positions and they DO work. But any position in which the dress contacts the 'floor' causes issues. I also can't get the dress to work in sitting positions, which is what I mainly am after. I suspended my character below in mid air in the pose I wanted not having the dress contact anything except the character and it worked. I have to say that when it works, especially on a dress like that it looks very nice. But really it is not of use to me if I cant sit my character down in the chair and the dforce has issues with the dress coming in contact with the object the character is sitting on.
Thank you,
Geo
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Hello All,
So far I have not received a comment on this, but I have done some of my own research in the meantime. I am finding out that dForce is VERY finicky. If the dress is too close the body it could cause the issue, but there are adjustments in which you can slightly pull the clothing away from the body. Another thing is that for laying down positions, I found that you HAVE to have a floor. So an actual floor or some kind of prop will do if you can get the figure to lay down fully on it. If you don't as soon as the dress goes passed the grid "floor", it will 'crash'. Also I found out with some dresses, long flowing hair is a big problem. If hair goes through the dress, it will cause the problem. With the girl I posted above, she had such long flowing hair and it caused trouble with another dForce dress I put her in. I couldn't figure out why the neckline on that dress kept exploding during simulation. Even though I pushed as much of her hair to the back as I could...there were a few strands that fell to the front and that was enough. So what I did is found an updo hairstyle that had a similar part in the front. Problem solved.
So I managed to get successful simulations with standing and laying down positions, but not sitting. The reason for this is that I have noticed that many sitting poses, change the orientation of the figure and if at any point during the positioning, if the lower part of the dress goes THROUGH the seat...the dress explodes. Thusfar I have not tried doing my own seating pose, but I gathered that if I could successfully go from a standing to seating position without the dress colliding into anything but the figure and the seat. (Colliding but not going through anything), it should work. If anyone has had proven success or any tips on getting dForce to work in a sitting position, I would like to know.
Thank you and Happy Holidays!
Geo
For the issue with the hair... All objects default to being a collision object with dforce. To make the hair not collide, select it and under the Parameters under Display turn Visible in Simulation to False. You actually should set everything in the scene to false except for the items you want to collide with dforce as this will not only reduce the explosion effects of non-interesting objects colliding it will also speed up the simulation since it can skip calculating the geometry intersections.
For seating, you would want to use an animated simulation. Start your character away from the chair, then move the timeline forward to Frame 15, set your seated pose, under the Simulation Settings under Simulation set Frames to Simulate to Animated (Use Timeline Play Range).
Oh! I didn't know you can do that. That is good to know as there are times when I want to use long flowing hair on a woman. As with the render I did, I changed out the hair to a 'bun' updo. But I think if the figure's hair was down, it would have made her look even prettier as the long hair would go well with the huge bell sleeves on the dress. As for the render times, I wonder if that is how others were doing it as my simulation times are so long...yet when I see simulations on Youtube, they seem to be always much faster.
The moving the timeline thing at the bottom of the screen doesn't seem to do anything. I guess there is a setting I have to select to do that? More often than not, when there is talk of dForce, there is talk of this time scale. While I can get the timeline up and grab the position indicator and move it to and fro, it just doesn't seem to do anything. So, would I be correct in that I need to know how to do an animated simulation?
Thank you,
Geo
Don't pose your character at the beginning of the timeline. You want to set the timeline then pose the character at that point. Also, you can also hide the hair (close the eye by the hair) and dforce will ignore it.
Watch this video. Click to play.
I can recommend this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/208141/how-to-use-dforce-creating-a-blanket-draping-clothes-on-furniture-and-much-more-commercial#latest
Hello All,
Got it!
Using RobotHeadArt's technique of positioning the character ahead of the chair (bench in my case) with the timeline part of the video Cris Palomino posted, I was able to sit my character down on the bench shown with no explosions!! (See Attached). One thing though, I initially couldn't get the timeline to work as per the video, but in the simulated settings screen, I clicked on the setting, "Start Bones from Memorized Pose" and turned that 'off' and the simulation started working with the timeline. The only thing I don't understand is that in the video, she has the setting 'on' and it still run. I have to try more simulations tonight and see what happens when I turn it back on. What is the purpose of that setting anyway as it seems to not have much an effect.
One thing is that the simulation runs a LOT slower than in that video. I figured I have a decent machine...it is an i7 6700k 4.0 ghz processor, but I am using the built in video and not a separate graphics controller.
I took a peek at that and there is a lot to digest there. Definitely some rainy day reading there.
Thank you all for the help. I know I have much more to learn in regards to dForce, but this is a good start as I was able to do standing and laying down poses. But I didn't know that her hair got me into trouble as well. Once I gave her a new hair style and made sure the dress didn't 'go through' anything prior to the simulation starting that seemed to solve the standing and laying down issues. But for sitting poses, the timeline works great in shifting the body over and the dress nicely conforms to the seat as well as the figure's body.
Now I can't wait to try out some more dForce clothing out on my ladies! The only other thing I would like to ask if there is a way I can tweak some adjustments on my machine to make the simulations run faster.
BTW, I named my character "Anna" and she is the first lady I created in Daz 3D. I have created three women now, but Anna is still my favorite. She looks amazing in that dress! I also posted a picture of her in a living room that is all decorated for Christmas (second attached picture).
Enjoy!
EDIT (12-12-18): I have had another successful simulation today with Anna sitting on a bench with her legs up. I used a dress that I created with the dForce Multi Dress System for Genesis 8 Female(s) This is a cool system to make a bunch of clothing items that can take the form of a long shirt all the way to a full elegant evening gown! I made a few outfits today with my favorite being a purple asymmetrical dress. It has one short butterfly sleeve on one arm and the other arm and neckline are fully exposed. On that side of her body, the skirt of the dress is also asymmetrical in a sideways hi-lo fashion. I will post the completed render as it is still rendering as I am typing this.
When doing the simulation I noticed that I have to turn off the option that says "Start Bones from Memorized Pose". Again, I had to turn that off in order for the simulation to run with the timeline. The timeline is great and that video above was helpful. But I have to say that it is a lot harder to do posing with long / flowing dresses as everything as to be set up just right. Anna's original hair style had to go. But the updo with her hair in a bun works fantastic. I tried to put a bob hairstyle on her today, but I didn't like the look. She looks good with her hair long or up in a bun as her hair is in the pictures below. So for outfits that don't need the dForce, then I could have her hair down and long. BTW, I think a long braided ponytail would look fanastic on her. I need to get that next!
Hope everyone had a good Christmas!
Geo
Hello again! This info was very helpful and helped me above, however, I have a related question in regards to the timeline. How do you erase the points in the event you made a mistake? I saw a clear timeline option, but it doesen't seem to do the trick.
Thanks!
On the timeline there is a button "Delete the Keys at the current time". It is the icon of the key with an X in the key.
I know this reply is a bit old, but I have noticed that even when deleting the key, the contents of the timeline don't change. I would like to know of an easy way to erase the timeline of data so I could start over.
What do yoy mean? Deleting a kjey should do that, the properties on the selected node should then go from the previous key to the next.
Actually it doesn't erase anything except the black arrow denoting the key. The posing information is still on the timeline. Do I have to select something before deleting the key?
The only time the information deletes something is if I put something new on that point, then it overwrites the old one. But yes, that is what I want to do is to delete a current key and then the time line reverts back to the last position that was saved. If I delete all the keys it should only show the first default position, right? That would be my guess, but it doesn't seem to work that way. ...Glitch?
The Timeline shows, and deletes, keys for currently selected nodes - it doesn't affect nodes that are not selected.
I have taken it to deleting all of the arrows on the bottom, but yet the timeline still has the data from the pose. For the start of the simulation to a pose, if I replace the pose, naturally everything inbetween is replaced, but I like to take my simulations out to 60 frames, stopping at 30 to allow for settling. The trouble comes into play is if I accidentally make 'after' adjustments with the timeline pointer on 60. Then if I go back to 30 and change the pose, anything after will conform to the OLD 'additional changes, in addition to going back to the old pose. Deleting the 60 key at the end doesn't erase everything back to 30 (which is the next point going back). this is very annoying as I have to go to each step between 30 and 60 and load up the new pose. Sometimes it is easier just to close the program, open it back up, load up the character and start all over with a new pose. It is just counterintuitive that way.
So I would say is there a way to globally delete everything on the timeline?
If there are no keys then the pose at frame 0 will apply throughout. I'm having trouble following your description of what is happening.
There's Edit>Figure>Clear Animation sub-menu if you want a nuke-it-from-space option.
It can be frustrating when you clear a key, but things keep doing what you thought you removed. What is happening here is there will be a key set for the bone you moved. And to see it on the timeline to clear it, you have to select that bone. That tripped me up more times than I like to admit.
To clear the pose from the Timeline completely, go to the main menu, (as Richard mentioned above): Edit->Figure->Clear Animation->Clear Figure Pose
The submenu for Clear Animation has multiple options:
Be careful with Clear Figure. That will clear both pose and shape. For example, if you load the base Genesis 8 Female and use morphs to create a unique body and face, Clear Figure will remove all of those changes. I haven't used or tested Clear Selected Item(s), but I would expect similar results.
So then the one I am after here is Clear Figure POSE...shape clears the morph too, right? I don't want that. I just want to erase the pose information so I could start over from scratch (pose wise).
Thank you.
Yes. For this scene.