"Fixing" clothing in a modeller

marble

HI,

I'm interested in making clothes fit my G2F figures. I have invested in a few items for her and have a whole wadrobe of V4 clothes which I can convert (I have the products that allow me to do that).

However, many - if not all - fail to fit correctly in certain poses, no matter how I tweak the dials. I'd have a go at making my own clothes but that is a long learning curve and, judging by some of the freebies available, it would probably take years to get to where I need to be.

So, because I already have an extensive wardrobe, I'd like to know the best tools for the job. I know how to send to Hexagon and fix a little poke-through here and there but I'd like to know if there are any tutorials that really explain the details? Adding wrinkles, fixing difficult poses (like sitting crossed-legged), fitting to extreme shapes (very heavy or a creature creation). Can I play with the rigging? Can I save the morphs?

So this would be something between fixing poke-through and making clothes from scratch. Any good tutorials? I have searched extensively, by the way, and tried a couple of Sickleyield's tuts on DevArt but videos would be handy. I don't yet understand triax or weight mapping or the complexities of morph transfer tools.

Also: what modeller? Hexagon? I see some people like Silo and I've seen mention of Sculptris. I have tried Blender but find that interface overwhelming.

Cayman Studios

If there's a particular pose that just won't shape correctly you can create a morph for it in a modeller along the same lines that you presumably do currently with the poke-through issues. Of course there is likely to be considerably more remodelling to be done, so you'll need to learn a bit about the modeller. For Hexagon I'd recommend Fugazi1968's Genesis Starter Kit to give you an overview of what can be done.

marble

Cayman said:

If there's a particular pose that just won't shape correctly you can create a morph for it in a modeller along the same lines that you presumably do currently with the poke-through issues. Of course there is likely to be considerably more remodelling to be done, so you'll need to learn a bit about the modeller. For Hexagon I'd recommend Fugazi1968's Genesis Starter Kit to give you an overview of what can be done.

I had assumed that the figure had to be in zero pose to export and create morphs. You seem to be suggesting I can send a posed figure, complete with clothing, to a modeller and create the morph? I'm now guessing that the recent trend to sell pre-posed clothes (like Aave Nainen) takes that approach. So you end up with lots of figure/pose specific morphs?

I do have Hexagon but it is prone to crashing (I'm on a Mac). Also, how does subdivision and even HD work when objects have to be exported at base resolution? I'm thinking here about creases in dresses, etc.

Richard Haseltine

If you are exporting you need to work at base resolution. Export the clothes and the figure as separate OBJs, then load (in different layers, if possible) into your modeller. Once the clothing is fixed, export that and load with Morph Loader Pro - expanding the options under the morph name there should be an option "Reverse deformations", right-click to turn it on.

Cayman Studios

marble said:

Cayman said:

If there's a particular pose that just won't shape correctly you can create a morph for it in a modeller along the same lines that you presumably do currently with the poke-through issues. Of course there is likely to be considerably more remodelling to be done, so you'll need to learn a bit about the modeller. For Hexagon I'd recommend Fugazi1968's Genesis Starter Kit to give you an overview of what can be done.

I had assumed that the figure had to be in zero pose to export and create morphs. You seem to be suggesting I can send a posed figure, complete with clothing, to a modeller and create the morph? I'm now guessing that the recent trend to sell pre-posed clothes (like Aave Nainen) takes that approach. So you end up with lots of figure/pose specific morphs?

I do have Hexagon but it is prone to crashing (I'm on a Mac). Also, how does subdivision and even HD work when objects have to be exported at base resolution? I'm thinking here about creases in dresses, etc.

Well, it would be quite difficult to guess how a morph would look in the required pose from the zero pose! So, yes, you export the clothing in the posed position, then do your "corrections". As Richard has said, you bring it back into DAZ using Morph Loader Pro, with "Reverse Deformations" checked, as your clothing at this point will not be in the zero pose.

I do not think that you will lose anything when subdivision is turned back on, because the morph is calculated from the base, not from the subdivided object, so whatever subdivisions applied previously will still apply.

marble

 

Richard Haseltine said:

If you are exporting you need to work at base resolution. Export the clothes and the figure as separate OBJs, then load (in different layers, if possible) into your modeller. Once the clothing is fixed, export that and load with Morph Loader Pro - expanding the options under the morph name there should be an option "Reverse deformations", right-click to turn it on.

 

I tried with Hexagon and it crashed (again). Can anyone suggest another inexpensive modeller. I think Silo is $100 but that is way below the price of ZBrush, etc. Otherwise, I might just have to get used to Blender.

marble

Cayman said:

Well, it would be quite difficult to guess how a morph would look in the required pose from the zero pose! So, yes, you export the clothing in the posed position, then do your "corrections". As Richard has said, you bring it back into DAZ using Morph Loader Pro, with "Reverse Deformations" checked, as your clothing at this point will not be in the zero pose.

I do not think that you will lose anything when subdivision is turned back on, because the morph is calculated from the base, not from the subdivided object, so whatever subdivisions applied previously will still apply.

I was also thinking about creating wrinkles and folds. That seems too detailed for un-divided polygons but sub-dividing in a modeller will break the mesh, right?

Cayman Studios

marble said:

Cayman said:

Well, it would be quite difficult to guess how a morph would look in the required pose from the zero pose! So, yes, you export the clothing in the posed position, then do your "corrections". As Richard has said, you bring it back into DAZ using Morph Loader Pro, with "Reverse Deformations" checked, as your clothing at this point will not be in the zero pose.

I do not think that you will lose anything when subdivision is turned back on, because the morph is calculated from the base, not from the subdivided object, so whatever subdivisions applied previously will still apply.

I was also thinking about creating wrinkles and folds. That seems too detailed for un-divided polygons but sub-dividing in a modeller will break the mesh, right?

It depends on the original mesh and how small you want your wrinkles to be. I think most clothing should be able to accommodate decent wrinkle morphs, but obviously I don't know how detailed you want to get. If you are only going to produce a one-off picture, you could sub-divide the clothing to your heart's content in the modeller and then re-import it as an unrigged object.

marble

Cayman said:

It depends on the original mesh and how small you want your wrinkles to be. I think most clothing should be able to accommodate decent wrinkle morphs, but obviously I don't know how detailed you want to get. If you are only going to produce a one-off picture, you could sub-divide the clothing to your heart's content in the modeller and then re-import it as an unrigged object.

Ahh - I think that's what I had in the back of my mind at the start of this thread. Or rather - is it possible to start with a garment, send it to a modelling app and then modify as I please (subdivide, cut bits off, etc.) - then import it as a new object and re-rig it as a "new" piece of clothing? Of course, this is for personal use, not for sale or distribution.

Cayman Studios

marble said:

Cayman said:

It depends on the original mesh and how small you want your wrinkles to be. I think most clothing should be able to accommodate decent wrinkle morphs, but obviously I don't know how detailed you want to get. If you are only going to produce a one-off picture, you could sub-divide the clothing to your heart's content in the modeller and then re-import it as an unrigged object.

Ahh - I think that's what I had in the back of my mind at the start of this thread. Or rather - is it possible to start with a garment, send it to a modelling app and then modify as I please (subdivide, cut bits off, etc.) - then import it as a new object and re-rig it as a "new" piece of clothing? Of course, this is for personal use, not for sale or distribution.

It's called "kitbashing", I believe. If that's what you need to do, then that's what you need to do! :coolsmile:

Richard Haseltine

You can use the Transfer Utility if the basic shape of the clothing is fairly similar - cutting bits off won't hurt, but additional bits would probably not get good weighting that way. In Transfer Utility set the original piece of clothing as the source and the new OBJ as the Target

marble

This all sounds encouraging. I've tried Sickleyields tutorial on the Transfer Utility so I'll give that another look.

Is it possible to split the mesh - to open a shirt, for example?

Cayman Studios

If you split the mesh you change the mesh, and so you cannot use it as a morph. However, as has been said before, you can use it as a new object in it's own right.

throttlekitty

marble said:

This all sounds encouraging. I've tried Sickleyields tutorial on the Transfer Utility so I'll give that another look.

Is it possible to split the mesh - to open a shirt, for example?

Since it sounds like you're modifying the clothing to essentially make a new outfit, the sky's the limit here. To expand on what Cayman said, existing morphs for said shirt won't work- they rely on the vertex index to function, welding two vertices, or splitting a vertex in two would break that index for example.

Or in the case of a button-up shirt that's already split (as it would be in real life), you can create morphs to open it up no problem.

marble

throttlekitty said:

Since it sounds like you're modifying the clothing to essentially make a new outfit, the sky's the limit here. To expand on what Cayman said, existing morphs for said shirt won't work- they rely on the vertex index to function, welding two vertices, or splitting a vertex in two would break that index for example.

Or in the case of a button-up shirt that's already split (as it would be in real life), you can create morphs to open it up no problem.

Ok - so it becomes a new object, as if it had just been created in a modelling program. Then it can be rigged (transfer utility) but it will have no movement or adjustment morphs. The movements are what are sometimes called "handles", right?

So, the choices are - use an existing item as a base object and lose all the rigging, movement, built-in morphs or, if I just want to make it fit certain poses, don't mess with the mesh, retain the rigging and morphs and just fit the cloth around the posed body.

I hope I'm understanding that correctly. Seems to me that the first option might be a "gentle" way in to clothing creation rather than starting from primitives in a 3D modelling program.

Richard Haseltine

Handles are rigging - those should be transferred. Morphs, no - if you had a modeller that understood morphs you might be able to load the existing morphs onto the original mesh before modifying it and then keep them as you changed it (though obviously you would have to set the morphs up for new pieces of mesh), then export each shape for loading in DS. modo will do that fairly well; Hexagon won't; I don't know about Blender.

marble

Richard Haseltine said:

Handles are rigging - those should be transferred. Morphs, no - if you had a modeller that understood morphs you might be able to load the existing morphs onto the original mesh before modifying it and then keep them as you changed it (though obviously you would have to set the morphs up for new pieces of mesh), then export each shape for loading in DS. modo will do that fairly well; Hexagon won't; I don't know about Blender.

I've downloaded a 30 day trial of Silo to see if I can get my head around that. Some favourable comments in the DAZ forums about the product though other are saying that Blender can do it all. I'm just bamboozled by the Blender interface (or at least I was a year ago when I tried it).

While I had ZBrush I was impressed by the fact that a figure plus clothing could be sent (via GoZ) and I could work on clothing on the figure without interfering with the mesh of the main figure. You mentioned "layers" earlier and I'm wondering whether this is a common feature in these programs.

marble

Since my last post, I decided to give Blender a try. I seem to be getting further with it than all my previous attempts so I'll persevere. It has similar sculpting tools to ZBrush but seems crude by comparison. I guess you would expect that from a free vs very expensive application.

Sculptris is also free and there are a lot of people who love it but, it seems, it does not do symmetry in the way ZBrush and Blender do so you end up with half the mesh broken into shards. Nevertheless, I've also downloaded it and am about to give it a try, while avoiding symmetry. At first glance, the interface is the complete opposite to Blender, being uncluttered and simple while you need the memory of Dr. Sheldon Cooper to know your way around Blender.

I've had some tips to prevent Hexagon crashing (to do with max undo levels) but it is still crashing on a whim. I've given up on it.

The one thing I'm trying to understand at the moment is, what is the best format for export into Blender. Both wavefront object and Collada are available but I don't understand the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Another subject that is very confusing is subdivision. Blender has an option on import and export to keep the vertex order so that the mesh is not destroyed by the time it is loaded back into DAZ Studio. But does that mean that I can work with subdivision while in Blender? Also, again at fist glance, Sculptris seems to dynamically add polygons. How can that work?

Cris Palomino

marble said:

Since my last post, I decided to give Blender a try. I seem to be getting further with it than all my previous attempts so I'll persevere. It has similar sculpting tools to ZBrush but seems crude by comparison. I guess you would expect that from a free vs very expensive application.

Actually, Blender's sculpting gets better and better, but you have to be careful because just as using with Dynamic Mesh in Zbrush adds geometry to the mesh, so does Blender's DynTopo (Dynamic topology). So it would probably work if you use a multires modifiier. You do not want to go crazy with upping the subd in the multires unless you plan to use the hi-res to generate normals/displacement etc. for use on a lower poly version.

Sculptris is also free and there are a lot of people who love it but, it seems, it does not do symmetry in the way ZBrush and Blender do so you end up with half the mesh broken into shards. Nevertheless, I've also downloaded it and am about to give it a try, while avoiding symmetry. At first glance, the interface is the complete opposite to Blender, being uncluttered and simple while you need the memory of Dr. Sheldon Cooper to know your way around Blender.

I'd be very surprised if Sculptris did not have symmetry. You might want to find out more. Again for Sculptris, you'd have to make sure nothing you use adds geometry because the will not allow you to bring the model back with the same vertex order.

I've had some tips to prevent Hexagon crashing (to do with max undo levels) but it is still crashing on a whim. I've given up on it.

The one thing I'm trying to understand at the moment is, what is the best format for export into Blender. Both wavefront object and Collada are available but I don't understand the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Collada dae preserves things like rigging, but I am not sure DAZStudio works with dae. I think I have heard it will import FBX, but you'd have to check.

Another subject that is very confusing is subdivision. Blender has an option on import and export to keep the vertex order so that the mesh is not destroyed by the time it is loaded back into DAZ Studio. But does that mean that I can work with subdivision while in Blender? Also, again at fist glance, Sculptris seems to dynamically add polygons. How can that work?

I addressed some of this above.

marble

Cris Palomino said:

Actually, Blender's sculpting gets better and better, but you have to be careful because just as using with Dynamic Mesh in Zbrush adds geometry to the mesh, so does Blender's DynTopo (Dynamic topology). So it would probably work if you use a multires modifiier. You do not want to go crazy with upping the subd in the multires unless you plan to use the hi-res to generate normals/displacement etc. for use on a lower poly version.

So, are you saying that it is possible to export at SubD other than zero and work on the mesh in Blender or Sculptris? If so, I'd like to find out more about that. I had become convinced that the only way not to break the vertex order was to export from DS at Base level and SubD at zero.

Cris Palomino said:

I'd be very surprised if Sculptris did not have symmetry. You might want to find out more. Again for Sculptris, you'd have to make sure nothing you use adds geometry because the will not allow you to bring the model back with the same vertex order.

Sculptris has symmetry turned on by default but, if I understand it correctly, it works by creating a mirror-mesh, not by mirroring the action of the brush. The mirror mesh is obviously non-original polygons so it won't work back in DAZ Studio.

Collada dae preserves things like rigging, but I am not sure DAZStudio works with dae. I think I have heard it will import FBX, but you'd have to check.

There's this Khaliboo add-on for Blender which suggests Collada is the way to export from DAZ Studio.

EDIT: Have spent a couple of hours trying to figure why Sculptris loads with a black sphere on a black background, only to find, eventually, that Sculptris doesn't work with the latest version of Mac OSX (Yosemite). I guess that's the problem with unsupported software - it never gets updated.

EDIT 2: Logged a support call about Sculptris and they confirmed it is not supported with Yosemite but they have since replied further with a config file change that fixes the problem.