Inquiry: How many of you use Marvelous Designer?
Faux2D
Posts: 452
I've been experimenting for some time with MD's simulation engine and the results I've been getting are better than my initial expectations. Long story short it's possible to add full outfits (cloth + belts + zippers + armor + rubber + anything else) and simulate it as a whole in MD. The cloth parts will behave like cloth, and the hard surfaces will maintain their shape. Attached some screens for exemplification. The zipper of the boot can be undone, and the shirt's buttons can be undone as well. Simulating whole outits like this eliminates the need for rigging clothes completely.
I've been looking at the newest Freja 8 bundle and thought to myself how cool it would look to add full outfit simulation to such complex clothing.
I would love to create outfits specific for this method but the downside is that it only works with MD's engine. Would this be something of interest to you? How many of you regularly use MD in your workflow?
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I used it in the past at a studio I worked for. In my experience, users of MD are usually creators, those that are PAs or aspiring to be one, not normal DS users. I know I am not prepared to spend $490 on just a cloth engine when I have other alternatives like Deforce or Blender
If you are getting such great results in MD, I am sure there are quite a few DS users that would be into purchasing some clothing made for the DAZ figures to use in DS.
If you are looking to create MD addons, they have a small store at their site.
It's amazing and works extremely well with Blender. For me there was (is) a tremendous learning curve because it is not a modeling program, it uses all metaphors for what professional clothing designers do in the real world, of which I knew nothing, but the results are out of this world realistic.
I have MD8 - bought it when it was offered at half-price a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I have been too lazy to figure out how to integrate it seemlessly into my workflow so, in the meantime, I've continued to buy dForce items and use them in my scenes. Recently I've been taking another look at my workflow and how I might combine DAZ Studio/Blender/MD into a cohesive routine, especially for short animations where I need clothing to move naturally on my characters. I'm not there yet and don't expect I will be for some months to come.
The method that I'm using only takes advantage of their cloth engine. I just import the outfit as an OBJ into MD then simulate it. It does not matter what software these outfits were created in, they just need to follow some strict guidelines when modelling. I wouldn't be able to sell in their store because they only sell outfits created entirely in MD.
Yeah, most people use it to quickly create a base for an outfit then export it into another program to add further details. However its cloth engine has gotten ridiculously good. It can create cloth animations that can even rivals Pixar's.
The way an MD-ready Daz outfit would work is like this:
Load the character + outfit in Daz Studio > pose the character > export the zero pose of the character + the posed version of the character as OBJ's> load the zero pose of the character as an avatar in MD > load the MD-ready version of the outfit in MD as an "OBJ to garment" > load the posed version of the character as a morph inside MD > wait for the simulation to finish > export the outfit from MD and import it back into Daz as a morph
The workflow is similar to that of dForce. No special knowledge of MD is needed.
However a great deal of processing power is required. I have an i7 and a GTX 980m. It's very manageable if the outfit has less than 200k polygons (400k tris). I can do animations as well but I have to go frame by frame which means losing inertia on the outfit. Attached an example. Rendered in 3Delight in Daz.
Sorry, forgot gifs don't work. Here's an imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/fzlwMtH
Here's what I am in the process of trying, bearing in mind that my processing power is similar to yours in that I too have an i7 (5 years old) and a GTX 1070.
I've tried exporting clothing made for DAZ Studio and not had much luck in MD - a lot of it just fell apart.
I have a zero pose MD avatar for several of my G8 and G3 characters already - easy to import them.
I have recently tried importing to both Blender and MD using the Sagan Alembic utility so generously gifted to us by @TheMysteryIsThePoint - this seems to work well for animations but I need to play with it a lot more before I can be confident of the workflow. There's a discussion in the Blender area if you are interested.
Your Gif is impressive (I do wish this forum could accommodate gifs).
All geometry has to be attached in an outfit otherwise it all falls appart. An outfit that's MD-ready takes this into account, so it's all a 3D modelling trick to have outfits simulate properly in MD.
MD 9 has the option to use the GPU for simulation however it gives this weird result where all clothing looks puffy. So what I do is use the GPU (which is very fast for me, and for you faster) to get the character and outfit in the intended pose. Then I switch the simulation to CPU and wait for like a minute or two. This gives me great results.
I did a couple is tutorials in August given by a MD worker on youtube and felt she did a good job, the MD was easy enough to understand even if the number of options are a bit overwhelming to a non-tailor, and the MD program was responsive and fast enough that I bought a perpetual license today. The prior license was a 30 day trial license.
So, you will probably run into some bugs depending on what you do and exactly how you do it. It's expensive but the time saved making realistic clothing patterns is worth it if you are serious about 3D modeling as a hobby.
hey, stylish outfit in opening post!
This might be because they're changing their business model completely. They announced MD ver 10 will no longer have a floating liscence or whatever it's called. They're going for what Maya does and charge every month or something like that. It's an absurd business model in my opinion. I like Houdini (which also has a cloth simulator) and Unity's model which is: everything is free but if you make money off of it they need to have a cut.
1 month is not enough time to get the hang out of the software and integrate it somehow in a pipeline. If people don't have time to figure out what your software is good for, why would they purchase it in the first place? But anyway, these dumb business decisions almost never come from the people who have actually developed the software.
yeah my month trial a few years back was woefully insufficient (had a lot of stressful going on in my life at the time too) I couldn't even grasp the basics of it.
I have a subscription service (annual) and I definitely am not deactivating it between using on different computers (or am I?). There is the 'auto-deactivation' on log in, which i never bothered to learn what that means. I guess if i have that checked, maybe it means im deactivating it when i close the program?
But certainly I have never had any issues using on more than one computer.
Nonesuch00 I have had similar activation issues with Octane render standalone and my Carrara plugin, it was just a matter of contacting customer service, so hopefully for MD and it's company its the same.
I think MD is pretty intuitive to learn even if you dont watch that many tutorials on it. I also don't think there are that many tools/options within the program to come to terms with. In my opinion it is a very simple program, much simpler than say Daz Studio or Blender etc.
I study other people's outfits to understand what they did to make them (many of these on artstation) rather than watching an abundance of tutorials. I learn better this way because it is more fun.
That said, 'Daniel' and 'Evgeniya Petrova' have some good tutorials on youtube. The 'tips' youtube vid by Evgeniya is quite good.
we are all different, I actually found Blender more intuitive
but then I model with Carrara and many don't grasp that at all
I did the trial and loved it. I found it to work much quicker and was easier to manage than dforce. Pretty much all I used it for was draping morphs. I think I added morphs for almost every outfit I use regularly. I did make a few of my own outfits but they were very basic, nothing like what you see people post on youtube and what-not.
The pricing is just way out of the hobbiest ballpark for me. So it's one of those things that I'll leave to the pros and addicts.
I bought full version as I don't like monthly subscriptions. I do like it but it is mainly for hobbiest reasons.
It is in the future going subscription only, so I won't be doing that. I may upgrade again, as I'm allowed to do that re the terms of the licence.
I really like it, but I might be more of a fringe use case as I'm not sure how many people would want to fork out for MD just for my small use case. I really only use it when I put a scene together and I want an added bit of interest that can be achieved by a more advanced clothes simulation or anything else that is fabric-based that I want simulated. I do lots of comcs, however, so I'll often use it on a double-page spread or something like that which really needs to look fancy, but I don't use any of the clothes building functionality. It's just a simulation engine, which I pay the monthly subscription fee for.
The MD/ClO 3D customer support has fixed the problem & I identified (I think) that it was caused by their licensing scheme not taking into account randomly generated HW addresses when connecting to WiFi routers that serve a a security method. So their support is on Far East time involves a wait for New World folk but they are resposive.
I still don't like the ideal of owning a perpetual license and not being able to use the SW I licenses because of network problems or problems on their server though. Still that's how they do it so I hope such problems aren't too frequent.
Yes, auto-deactivate deactivates it automatically when you exit so you can go to your laptop or another computer you own. I tested it for about an hour last night going back & forth between my desktop & laptop.
thanks
So I'd be interested to know whether (and how) those who do use MD are integrating it into their workflow, especially if Blender is part of that workflow. Learning how to get good results from MD is only part of the story for DAZ Studio users - the rest is how to show those results in the final render, whether that be an IRay scene or an Eevee animation.
I'm getting the impression that not many of those who have added to this particular discussion are using MD to create their own wardrobe. The impression seems to be that it is mainly used as a simulation engine for already existing clothing - somehow manipulated in a modelling app so that the pieces don't fall off. That's fair enough - most of us have an extensive library of purchased Genesis clothing over several generations (not to mention V4/M4) so it would be a shame not to be able to use some of that library. I'd just like to know, step-by-step, how you go about it.
The modelling is tricky to explain if you're not a modeler but it's about taking advantage of morph targets. Morphs are based on vertices so the exploit that I'm using is adding extra geometry to the mesh without changing the vertex count. An example would be a button on a shirt. Simulating normally would make this button to fly off. But if you add extra polygons to connect the shirt to the button (i.e. connecting the button verts with the shirt verts) everything behaves as desired.
Adding animation can be done by using the .mdd format. It's basically just a series of morphs, one for each frame of the animation. It's kinda like the process I described previously except MD does it automatically for each frame/morph. The resulting cloth animation can be exported back into Daz then rendered, or any other renderer. There's no need to setup materials in MD for anything because you're just using it to get some morphs.
However this is not the process I used to create my little animation. I don't have the processing power to just simulate everything at once so I had to go slowly frame by frame. If MD fixes their GPU-powered simulation algorithm, simulating everything at once will be a piece of cake with cards like the 3080.
I don't have MD9 so GPU is not an option for MD8. I might upgrade before they remove the option to upgrade the permanent licence but I am loath to spend more on something that I don't use as much as I anticipated.
Have to admit that I don't really understand how you can add polycons without increasing the vertex count. As you say, I don't model so I find that confusing.
Vertices are only one kind of geometry. He's taking about adding edges to "connect" the parts that dForce keeps in place with metadata.
Is your value proposition in your OP that you could create morphs to weld unwelded Daz content?
I've never really tried to sim much Daz content because most of the daz soft-clothing is kinda crappy. There are some good items, but scarce. I would rather someone weld all those outfits by Albin on cgtrader!
Anyway, I'm surprised your shoes held up so well in simulation as an obj.
Can i ask a question to the room - does anyone else have issues with losing the UV's of your 'Obj to garment'. If i save a project that has an Obj to Garment in it, and reopen the project, the obj has lost its UV, which means when it comes time to export, the exported file is useless because it cannot be textured in renderer. (Or maybe im dumb and UV can be recovered)
EDIT: nevermind, i figured out a solution as soon as i asked this question. solution: I can just use load the original uncorrupted obj as a UV set back into daz.
Well I just bought MD yesterday but I have very specific plans, for years now but held off because the computers couldn't handle it and my budget couldn't either, on using MD to make clothing for use in games of which I know will never likely be created by others in the DAZ or other stores. The clothing I want to make is very niche and so are the games. I'm not going to go into specific details though about what those niches are but they are things I like and would be fun for me to make.
Part of using MD to make clothing is that it will be used in Unity or UE4 on character models I've bought from the DAZ 3D Store. So those MD clothes will need to be properly fit then on the DAZ 3D characters in DAZ Studio and exported to Unity/UE4. I also expect to need to use Blender to create animations with those characters and MD clothing that have been integrated in DAZ Studio and exported into Blender to use to create my own unique looped animation clips which in turn will get exported to Unity/UE4 as well.
Whether I use Unity or UE4 is still up in the air and depends on which gives me a better game that I can export to more platforms. UE4 has been much improved regarding the number of platforms you can export your UE4 apps to. The MD4, Blender, and DAZ Studio parts of my production needs are pretty set in stone though. If I use UE4 I likely will use Quixel to make shader materials but if I go with Unity I will likely need to use Substance instead.
I'm pretty excited that computers have come this far in 10 years.
I have MD7 which I got on Steam a few years ago. It's fun but your have to accept its limitations. Cloth simulation does a "good enough" just and it does it fast. A skilled sculptor will always be able to pull off more realistic looking fabric than a cloth simulation produces but they sure as heck won't be able to do it as quickly. Luckily I've also got 3DCoat so I can get the best of both worlds.
I've used it in the past. As much as I liked it, my computer really struggled with MD8. Plus, the licenses are too pricey for me. I'm on Cloth Weaver, now. But my computer seems to hate that as much as it hated MD8 (plus, I can't figure out how to sew clothes to a model with an A-pose - i.e. Genesis 8 figures).
Interesting that the subject of the computer not being up to the MD task keeps cropping up. I certainly noticed it with some of the garments that I bought for MD and hoped to send to DAZ Studio - MD just sat there in suspended animation until I force-quit. So maybe some re-meshing needs to be done or I'm just not understanding the settings.