Some dForce tips
asbrainiac_d0d9ea3447
Posts: 27
I've spent a lot of time running dForce simulations, so I thought I'd thank the community for the help they've given me by listing some of the things I've learned, as dForce seems to be a tricky thing for a lot of people to get the hang of.
1. dForce is quite powerful but it does not often work "right out of the box." The better you understand it, the better your results will be.
2. Collision mode: some dForce objects actually work better with "good" or "better" collision mode. I've found that dForce garments like tops and dresses typically simulate best with "Best" collision mode, but some dForce hair works better when simulating on "Good." It seems to help prevent hair from clipping in a lot of cases.
3. If your dForce object is exploding, try reducing one or more of the "stiffness" parameters, especially "bend stiffness." A value of 0.35 tends to eliminate explosions.
4. Make sure nothing is clipping with your dForce object before simulating. This will tend to cause it to get stuck or explode, both of which will ruin your simulation.
5. Consider running your simulations in layers. For example, if your character has a dForce hair and a dForce shirt, move the hair out of the way, freeze it, run the simulation on the shirt, freeze the shirt, unfreeze the hair, and run the sim again. This will make each simulation complete faster, create less chance of exploding or unwanted interactions, and allow you to catch errors before you've spent 10 minutes running a complex simulation. Freezing objects once you have a simulation result you like is good standard practice as well.
6. Apropo of tip 5, you can clear simulation data on objects individually by selecting the object, right clicking the simulation settings tab > dForce > clear selected objects.
7. Consider whether to "simulate from memorized pose" or not. You may want to leave this option enabled if your figure is clipping with the dForce item in its desired pose. Use it to move a character from a pose where there is no clipping into the desired pose. But, if it's not necessary, leave it off, as it just takes longer to run your simulation with it on.
8. Simulate over an animation to address more complicated issues. For example, if you want a character with a dForce dress to sit in a chair, you will probably have problems if you just pose her on the chair. Instead, create an animation where you lower her down onto the chair, and then run a dForce simulation of the animation. You may also want to add up to an extra second's worth of frames to be simulated to allow things to settle.
9. The dForce Magnet product on the Daz store is awesome for handling more complex draping and other kinds of interactions.
10. If you learn about dForce weight maps, you can do neat stuff like like draping dForce clothing over an object rather than fitting it to a figure.
11. If an object should not factor into a simulation, go to the parameters tab, click "display," and turn off "visible in simulation. This will speed up your simulation by reducing the number of checks Daz has to do for geometry collisions. A good example of this would be if you have a character with a skirt and dForce hair. If the hair is not long enough to touch the skirt, there is no reason to include the skirt in the simulation.
12. If a simulation produces some clipping, a D-former node is usually an easy way to hide the offending geometry.
13. Even an imperfect simulation can be fine for a render. My rule is, if I can't see it, it doesn't matter.
14. Give dForce surfaces a little bit of room from other objects that can collide with them. If a figure wearing a dForce skirt is going to have her hand on her hip, place the hand slightly above the hip to prevent it from forcing the skirt to clip through.
15. When simulating an animation, don't forget that you can adjust the initialization time in Simulation Settings. This will give dForce objects some time to settle before the animation begins.
16. dForce simulations are often an iterative process. It will often take multiple simulations to get the result you want, especially in complex scenes or poses. Don't be afraid to adjust dForce surface settings and such to see if you can get a better result. The better you understand dForce, the fewer simulations you will likely have to run.
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Comments
I want to add a big asterisk next to your point 7, as it doesn't "just" take longer to run your simulation with Simulate from Memorised Pose on; it does so much more than that.
dForce isn't just about draping fabrics, but can also be about how they pull. For example, a t-shirt. The bottom of a t-shirt arm is usually shorter than the upper, because (and this true for both real-life and Genesis 8) it's usually made in something of an A-pose. This means, that one lifts their arms to level, the end of the sleeve should no longer be square with the arm. However, standard conforming rigging cannot handle this kind of fabric dynamics. The way it's weighted to the arms means that the end of the sleeve will unrealistically remain square with the arm.
This is important, because dForce can handle that kind of fabric dynamics, but because it takes the edge lengths of the object from the initial shape it has in the simulation, you can't start from a state where the object has already been stretched by the standard rigging - you need to start from a neutral pose.
You can see an example of this working in one of my older renders:
Gallery Link
For Whisky (the character being lifted), you can see that because her sleeves were simulated from a neutral pose, they have this realistic pull.
Another important thing to consider about the fact that dForce objects take their edge lengths from their initial shape, and for whom Whisky is again a good example, is that it can often sort out clothing fit where morph-following cannot:
For the left of these, the top was simulated starting from her full body shape, and thus the end result inherits the odd and unnatural warping of the fabric around her breasts. For the right, her breast shapes were dialled in over a timeline simulation. The fabric thus starts from an unstretched shape, and ends up fitted around her chest much more realistically. (Including shoulder straps with some tension on them).
This has some limits - sometimes a figure's shape is too different from the initial shape for the fabric to still fit if you dial in their entire morph that way, but it is definitely something to consider.
Other things to note about how the shape of the dForce object (at least, a fully dynamic object) is based on the initial state in the simulation mean that while you can't directly affect the sizing of the object during the sim, you can instead shrink or grow the character on the timeline and (when those keyframes are later removed), those changes will end up inverted on the clothing (as, once the simulation is done, the clothing reverts to working on conforming rigging).
Understanding how the object's shape is handled during the sim means that dForce can do things that go a lot further than just colliding long flowy dresses. (One of the early versions of Whisky, before I promoted her to a recurring character, so she looks a bit different):
Gallery Link
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One other major tip I would add, although it is a bit of a process.
- dForce simulations do not necessarily need to be done on the clothing you eventually want to use. Because the simulated shapes can be exported to OBJ, they can be converted to morphs (using the "Reverse Deformations") option, and this then means they can be transferred via the Transfer Utility. If you can find another object with a similar (preferably slightly larger) "silhouette" to your uncooperative object but which will otherwise simulate similarly, you can sim that first, then bake and transfer the simulation to the clothing you *do* want.
So useful to know! I had missed this back when I was just starting out and every simulation took forever.
Along the same lines: Reduce the SubD of your character for the simulation to speed things up, then ramp it back up afterwards for the render.
Matt already mentioned this but the timeline can not only change a figures pose but also its shape.
Here's a fun thing I did: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5506251/#Comment_5506251
Ah! This reminds me of something that's very important, and which is not well documented.
Turn off all smoothing while running simulations. (ManFriday's dForce Companion helps a lot with managing this).
The smoothed shape is not used for the object's own simulation, but is recalculated from the object's genuine shape every single tick of the simulation. The only thing it's used for is working out if the object affects *other* objects in the scene, which means that in almost all cases, it's just a massive amount of wasted time.
There are some very niche cases where it's useful*, but they're fairly few and far between, and unless you know exactly why you're doing it, you almost certainly want it off.
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* For example, I used it here (yes, it's Whisky again):
Gallery Link
This was me testing Hamster's V2 dForce breasts (hence why I was using Whisky, because she's one of my characters who most benefits), which requires that the clothing layers are simulated afterwards. So I used a smoothing modifier on the breast geograft that was targeting an (invisible) geoshell on the guitar, which pushed the geograft mesh enough out of the way so that the shirt and underwear had some space to simulate in, rather than being crushed between the two surfaces and exploding.
Ah, yes, that is indeed another useful tip you mention there. While often you do want Self Collision on to stop skirt folds collapsing through each other, turning it off can help a lot with items that have modelled seams. (Those are still a pain to convert to dForce, but having smoothing on after the simulation with Base Shape Matching can usually do something to restore their shape).
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Another thing I now remember to add about clothing layers and timeline simulations - if clothing has an "Expand All" parameter, or it can have one added through something like Fit Control, you can actually help fit the outer layers over the inner layers by shrinking the inner layer inside the body at the start of the timeline, then expanding it back into place so that the outer layers are pushed out of the way (I did this with the bra on the above piece, so that the shirt fitted over it well).
Inversely, you can also expand an outer layer at the start of the sim, then shrink it down to push a lower layer into place.
... just make sure you remember to freeze the right simulations during this, otherwise that dForce bra you've shrunk inside the body will resimulate and fall into a collapsed mess in the character's pelvis. (Guess how I know).
Building off of this- I've found it can be very helpful to ensure there is no poke-through on dforce clothing prior to simulating. Often times dforce clothing will have some poke-through even before simulation which can cause problems if not addressed. Thankfully it's easy, just turn off smoothing before the simulation, go into smooth shaded mode and use mesh grabber to fix any clipping issues. A good example of something I use this method for is the shirt from dForce Midsummer Outfit. If I want to simulate with the "Pose Off Shoulder" morph, it may appear at first not to have clipping issues; until smoothing is turned off and clipping issues are revealed.
Yes! You've managed to remind me of a point I meant to make, but completely forgot about by the time I was finished, so all credit there.
Because smoothing is almost entirely ignored by the simulation, having smoothing on will not fix clipping as far as the sim is concerned and the meshes will still end up sticking together at that point. This is another reason having the smoothing on is actually also detrimental to simulation, because it can hide the fact you've got a bad starting condition.
In general - unless you've got a very deliberate reason to have smoothing on for the simulation, turn it all off.
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On a similar note: I recommend making use of the Collision Layer parameters, as this helps dForce sort what should be on top of what, but bear in mind that the parameter (despite being in the surface pane) is actually object level. I'm not sure what value is taken if you provide a mix of values on different surfaces, so I just recommend setting all surfaces on an object to the same layer.
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Another useful point that I've also now remembered is that: If you're having problems with dForce quantum tunnelling through your character's hands/fingers if they're trying to pull fabric, make use of high density primitives parented to their hands/fingers. The high mesh density helps dForce detect the collisions.
Similarly, if you're trying to drape fabric over hands or other complex details, then I'll usually use a sphere or something to support the fabric above the hands until the last few frames of the simulation, before moving/shrinking the primitive out of the way at the very end. This means that the simulation has fewer frames for the collisions to glitch, and it's more likely to give you a favourable end result.
Thank you for all these tips! dForce and I have never been very good friends. Maybe that can change now?
As long as you don't mind your friend occasionally exploding on you...
I've gotten quite used to dForce's random angry outbursts hehe. My favorite is when the figure itself joins in.
One little trick I've found: the morphs on dForce clothing do not have to be the same as the morphs on the underlying figure. For instance, if a breast morph stretches the textures on a top, you can zero it on the top, and instead use less distorting morphs like Sternum Depth to get it into place for draping.
Just wanted to say your list is a nice, concise top-level reference for dForce. Thanks for sharing
Thank you for this helpful information! Say, what is the jeans and tee outfit that your character's wearing in the image where she's pulling the tee down over her bra?