Serious question about men's clothing
mavante
Posts: 734
If this has been beat to death on here already, I'm sorry, but I can't keep my typing fingers still any longer on this truly serious question:
Why does most of the clothing for females in Daz products look flowing and tailored and graceful and alluring, but most of the clothing I see for males—whether here or "elsewhere"—either looks like a plastic mold of "clothes" (think Mr. Potato Head "clothes"); or looks like the guy just rolled out of a cardboard box in an alley; or looks like the pants or shirt had been spray-painted on the figure? Many of them are just so embarrasingly ill-fitting and Bargain-Bsement. (Yes, even dForce "suits," of which one notable example has recently appeared in a "NEW!" batch of G8 products.)
I'm serious. I could post examples, but I really don't want to bash any content or content creators. I just don't understand the enormous disconnect in style and charm and fitting between the clothes for females and the clothes for males. Is there a technical or physical reason? I'm stumped.
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Comments
Because "males don't sell", therefore why take the time to do a really good job on the clothing and/or accessories? Time is money.
There ARE really good vendors who create men's clothing. I can't paint everything and everyone with a broad brush. Luthbel comes to mind. His stuff is great and I have a ton of it.
Laurie
I too, have been having a hard time finding really trendy, well tailored clothes for males (but I'm new to Daz and assumed I hadn't found the hotspots for artists that specialize in male fashion). I've been cheating and using auto fit and women's clothing (jeans, sweaters, etc ) Does anyone else have any good recommendations to add?
regarding the 'plastic' issue, if its a dforce outfit, you will generally get more creases and what have you when you pose the figure in some way that isnt just 'standing about'.
I really like Oskarson's clothing, male & female.
Can't say "ditto" or "werd" enough for this. No need for examples, those who feel your pain know exactly what you're talking about. I whine about it almost every time a new piece of clothing comes out for males. Some can be fixed with a little sweat, tears, and customized dForce settings...even stuff not made for dForce. Here's an example of an outfit that is relatively new that wasn't made for dForce at all, but it was...let me just say it was not good. It fit exactly like you described, but dForce, along with a bit of ZBrush, helped it along -
@melissastjames Nice work. You know, exactly one year ago today I submitted a support ticket for one of the more glaring issues with this set. The ticket is still open.
There's Luthbel, Luthbellina, and IH Kang and DarkEdgeDesigns, and not a lot of others who make serviceable men's clothing. My go-to for suits is the Trading Floor one from 3 years ago, and that's for G3M. It would be nice if there was more variety, but the economics of it suggest there won't be too much. Also, I think a really nicely tailored men's suit would be a lot of work, especially if it were to include the kind of open-close, etc. morphs we take for granted with clothing for female characters. The people who want this stuff are pretty vocal about it, but what counts in the end is sales volume.
As far as cross-gender workarounds that aren't autofit, there are this and this.
Thanks! The most glaring issue with this set that I could not fix is the seam running up the front of the shirt...I'd understand if it was a button down, but it's not so the seam just stands out like a pink elephant painted on the front. The collar is also kinda...odd...like I can't even describe what is wrong with it but something is off. May I ask what your ticket was for?
It's the normal maps that cause that issue. I documented it extensively for CS, but there it sits...still open.
Man, now I wished I had played around with the textures more for it. I usually swap out for various shaders, but I think it was the banding on the arm that is part of the mesh that made it look wrong so I stuck with the included texture set.
I create my own clothes now for males that I can't find in the shop to suit my needs. I have remade some of the dforce clothes that I've bought for my own pleasure and added the details I thought were missing from the original and it works for me. It's more work, some if my custom clothes take some hours to finish and some take days and I don't always enjoy it but at least all my clothes fit my needs.
Besides Luthbel and IH Kang there is also Meshitup. They create some very good Male sets that I can recommend heartily. Also, Polygonal miniature has a fantastic Male casual clothing set. They sell more obj files with Male clothing on artstation but they come with a hefty price tag (probably because the license allows what is the equivalent of the interactive license of the DAZ store).
I have one recent dForce purchase (https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-renaissance-dress-for-genesis-8-female) that no lie explodes when simulated from a standing zero position. Like, seriously? C'mon. I probably should have opened a ticket on it, but the problem was easy enough to fix on my end. But I'm sure there are more users out there that don't understand dForce enough to go outside of the box to fix things like that...so proper testing and re-testing of dForce settings should be A Thing™. (I totally get that it's a generalization because there are some clothes out there that drape wonderfully with out-of-the-box settings).
The way the shirt is UV mapped divides the front right down the middle. The normal maps have that "explosion" of colors that you often see on textures beyond the visible "seams". The minute you place the shirt on anything other than a default G8 and have the figure posed even slightly, the shirt stretches and exposes those edges. I know I'm not explaning this well, but poke around in the texture folder and you'll see what I mean.
The first is the shirt on Tristan's morph with a slight twist to the waist.
The second is with the normal map set to 0. Because some of the add-on textures use that same normal map, the problem exists with it, too.
Of course some dforce male clothes look stiff in the shop promos as well, so ...
Yup. This is a running complaint. Collars, lapels, shoulders, underarms, and crotches remain a mystery to most makers of male clothing. I see nikisatez has some shoulder pad thingys she added to her Trend Outfit. I bought it to see if I can use them in some of the rounded shoulder suit jackets that even I H Kang keeps making. Men's pants MUST have modeled details (seams, fly, waistband, belt loops) or they just look wrong. My leading man sticks with Luthbel and Mada clothing, and I let the supporting guys slog through with the other stuff. I just finished rendering a bunch of men's suits for a thread to go with the men's pants thread started a couple of years ago.
Pretty much every pair of male pants made for dForce... :/
Yeah, my example was on a G3 (manually converted with SY's method). I have since converted that character to G8.
You'd just think the seam would have been put down the side or something...
....I have the cross Figure Kit for G3. works nice.
...I wish it was easier to tell that by reading the product description. Don't want to flood CS with a bunch of refund requests.when it doesn't.(older hardware).
Flowing, graceful, and alluring, sure, I'll accept that, though maybe people aren't as accepting as comparable items for men's clothing? But tailored? Please. Much of the women's clothing in the store that should be "tailored" suffer the same issues that men's clothing does. The people making the best tailored women's clothing are generally also making the best men's tailored clothing, several vendors are already mentioned in this thread doing so.
I have it too, for G3 and G8, and I have RSSY's G8 gender conversion kit too...both suffer from the same problem...boobs. I'm not saying it's any fault of the kits whatsoever...I just think it's the nature of the breast err beast. I have no female characters who would be considered jubbly-licious, but the results I get when converting male clothing to anything with breasts causes distortion around that general area. It really stands out on rigid armor that might have rivets or whathaveyou that should be round, etc.
...yeah, that was also an issue way back in the Gen3/4 days with the clothing converters available at the time as well.
...Aave Nainen comes to mind.
I'll check out Luthbel, Luthbellina, and IH Kang and DarkEdgeDesign when I have some discretionary time for it. This is a drive-by posting. Thanks for the tip about Trading Floor, but even that one has the horrid collar creep, where the coat rides halfway up the character's neck. The H & C Business Suit has a similar problem, but not quite as bad to my eye. Then again, the shirt on that often looks to be about a size and a half too large in the neck. (Sigh)
Good god, there's enough of that saturating all of media. I ain't dragging into my artwork.
LOL, they're talking about converting male clothing to work on female characters (or vice versa)...which with some stuff can yield wonderful results. One use I have is for medieval fantasy armor. I will not put my female characters into chainmail bikinis. You can find some nice actual armor sets made for females, but there are way more options for males. So that cross-gender converter comes in handy. (Though like I said above, there can be some distortion around boobage areas.)
In terms of clothing makers, Mada also makes some top-notch stuff. Mostly female, but there are a few male sets too.
Was it you who made a comment in some thread (speaking of threads) that said the male clothes often look like Saran wrap has been applied? If it wasn't you, take credit anyway. I laughed so I scared the neighbor's cat.
Yeah, it's really something that needs some serious help.
And yet when I wanted more of a warrior outfit for my recent shield maiden picture I ended up using Weathered Warrior and crossfitting it to my girl....lol It's not perfect but worked much better for what I wanted
Thank you! And yes! That collar...I tried going without the collar entirely and it looked even worse.
Haha, could be...I know I've used the saran wrap analogy before.