Applying Dforce vs a Dforce item?

Deke

Can D'Force be applied to any item? Is there a differenc between applying it to an existing older item vs buying an item that has Dforce built in?

Richard Haseltine

It can be applied, assuming we mean the dForce cloth, but how well it will work is another matter. Items that are sold as dForce have compatible meshes and have the necessary settings and weight-maps applied for the final behaviour that is required. If you convert an old item it may fall apart when simulated (unwelded sections), explode (most often due to self-intersection or intersection with the base figure), fall off (some items are definitely not practical), or drape oddly (due to the polygon structure, or just because the settings need adjusting).

Deke

Thanks for the information. Makes sense. I've been looking at some hair styles that have dforce built in.

L'Adair

Deke said:

Thanks for the information. Makes sense. I've been looking at some hair styles that have dforce built in.

Basically, the same thing Richard said applies, but perhaps even more so with hair. Very generally speaking, older hair consists of a skull-fitting cap with molded sections of mesh. Especially hair created pre-Iray, those mesh strips would often intersect. With 3Delight rendering, it wasn't much of an issue. But the intersecting can be apparent in Iray, so newer hair tends to have fewer, if any, bits of intersecting mesh. Newer hair also tends to have a lot of thin strips that look more realistic in Iray.

The one thing most of these hairs have in common is the strips of mesh, wide or thin, are not actually connected to the cap, so applying dForce will cause those strips to fall and intersect. I've gotten some pretty impressive dForce explosions hair I've tried adding dForce to.

There are two types of dForce hair now. Several vendors created hair and set it up to work with the original dForce, now called dForce Cloth. And then there are the newest dForce hairs which use the relatively recent released dForce specifically for fiber hair, appropriately called dForce Hair. I'm not sure it really matters for the end user so much, though, but the dForce Hair settings can be a bit daunting.

MMX released a product that can help you use and learn the settings for the new dForce Hair, here, and is worth taking a look at. It can also help to use the built in Strand-Based Hair editor, as many of the settings correspond with options in the editor.

Regardless, I think when it comes to dForce on hair, you're better off buying one that's been created to use dForce.

Now if you're interested in applying dForce to older clothing items, I have a thread that you may find helpful, dForce, dWeight and dWardrobe. And there is also RGcincy's wonderful, must-read, dForce thread, How to Use dForce: Creating a Blanket, Draping Clothes on Furniture, and Much More.

Deke

Excellent information. Thanks for the links!