Mesh Binding (for Cloth Simulation)

Paul Klein

Hey Everyone,

before posting it in the Suggestions Forum i thought i better ask it here in case something like this already exists (eventhough i searched every possible keyword but couldn't find it).

Question is... is there a way to Bind/Skin one Mesh to the Vertices of another Mesh?

The reason i ask is because there are a lot of Cloth assets that are just not suited for dforce simulation either because they are to complex or they consist of many seperate pieces. With Mesh Binding you could create a simple simulatable (if thats a word :)) version of your cloth and bind your complex final waerable to that simulation mesh and make it just follow it's vertices. Coming from 3ds Max this is known as skin wrapping and using this technique you could basically make every single piece of cloth no matter how complex it is dforce ready.

I'm curious what you guys think.

Richard Haseltine

I assume, from the mention of dForce, that this is in Daz Studio - in which case it might be better to move the thread to the Daz Studio Discussion forum by editing the first post.

I'm not aware of a way to do that, though I suppose if you rigged the proxy, simulated, exported as OBJ, loaded as a morph, and then used the Transfer Utility to rig and copy morphs into the full resolution item it might work at least to an extent.

Paul Klein

Richard Haseltine said:

I assume, from the mention of dForce, that this is in Daz Studio - in which case it might be better to move the thread to the Daz Studio Discussion forum by editing the first post.

I'm not aware of a way to do that, though I suppose if you rigged the proxy, simulated, exported as OBJ, loaded as a morph, and then used the Transfer Utility to rig and copy morphs into the full resolution item it might work at least to an extent.

Hi Richard,

sure thanks, will move it to the DAZ Studio Forum. And yes, a have a couple of workarounds in mind but with this solution you could stay in DAZ Studio and wouldn't have the hassle of exporting and reimporting. And The possibility of binding one mesh to any other is usefull fairly common in other 3D Apps, would be a big benefit to have it in DAZ Studio.

Richard Haseltine

You can make a feature request by submitting a Techncial Support ticket https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-contact-us - if there is a way to achieve this they may be able to tell you about it.

Paul Klein

i see... Cool Thanks!

deepsix

I was just thinking about this yesterday - whether you could use dforce proxy mesh to create a ragdoll animation to effect rigged characters within DAZ. And again today doing the same thing to achieve easy simple simulations on complex styled (non-strand) hair such as Marisandra hair.

Any idea Richard if you could perhaps do this via scripting or the API?

dijitul

Two products come to mind which may help with this.  First is blender.  Blender has a modifier which allows you to skin a mesh to another mesh.  I don't have it in front of me to get the modifier name, but it's there, maybe it was called shrinkwrap or something.  Anyway, I've used it to create collision "barriers" around hair to prevent poke through during cloth simulations.  I'm sure it can be used to generate morphs as well, if done correctly.

There's also Marvelous Designer (not free) but that is another level of effort needed.  It can be used to generate cloth "skins" and those can be used as collision barriers as well, or just to make your own clothing in general.  Hope that helps a little.