Rigging Clothing for Daz

MelissaGT

Hi ya'll. If I wanted to buy an un-rigged piece of clothing (say something from ArtStation), can anybody point me to a good tutorial on how to rig it and paint a proper weight map for use on a Daz figure? Is it ridiculously hard to do?

I do not and cannot get access to Max or Maya...I'm not a student and it's too expensive. I do not have Marvelous Designer. I do have ZBrush, which is where I have the most experience (which is nil, really...I've only used it to make simple morphs and UV map a couple static objects). I have very little experience with Blender, but I suppose I could learn (it is free, afterall). I've never used Hexagon. I have used Mudbox, but only for painting tattoos on a figure. 

I'm just kind of at my wit's end trying to find the right pieces of clothing to cobble together into a cohesive outfit that fits my style...and those that know me on the forums know I'm always on the lookout for super detailed medieval fantasy (with less emphasis on the fantasy) clothing...for males and females. So like stuff you'd see in 'The Lord of the Rings' movies on the rangers and soldiers and the general population. I've seen some gorgeous stuff on ArtStation, etc but none of it is rigged. 

Exeter

Daz has a basic rigging tool in the transfer utility. There are quite few tutorials on Youtube for a variety of experience levels. Searching 'Daz3d rigging clothes' should bring up a lot of options.

MelissaGT

Exeter said:

Daz has a basic rigging tool in the transfer utility. There are quite few tutorials on Youtube for a variety of experience levels. Searching 'Daz3d rigging clothes' should bring up a lot of options.

Yeah, I've used the transfer utility before for other things, but it was my understanding that for this specific situation, the clothing still wouldn't move/bend right due to the weight mapping.  

Havos

Assuming the clothing is in a A pose, similar to Genesis 8, then a rapid option is to make the clothing dForce only, if it is not extremely heavy on the polygons. Then just scale the outfit to roughly fit the desired figure, and run a simulation. Alternatively scale/morph/pose the figure to fit the clothing, then return the figure to their own shape during the simulation run. The latter method can also be used to get non-A pose clothing into the std A pose shape before rigging.

Of course rigging the clothes is a better option if it is an item you will use a lot.

I have rigged stuff before using the transfer utility, and it tends to work alright for tighter fitting clothing, but it often will distort quite badily for extreme poses. This is where you need to add weight maps to help, but I don't know much about that subject.

Richard Haseltine

MelissaGT said:

Exeter said:

Daz has a basic rigging tool in the transfer utility. There are quite few tutorials on Youtube for a variety of experience levels. Searching 'Daz3d rigging clothes' should bring up a lot of options.

Yeah, I've used the transfer utility before for other things, but it was my understanding that for this specific situation, the clothing still wouldn't move/bend right due to the weight mapping.  

As long as the clothing lines up with the zeroed figure (if it doesn't you may need to scale and move it, perhaps use a dForm to adjust the shape in places, and then export as OBJ/reimport using the same preset so everything is baked in place) then the Transfer Utility should give a decent starting point. Depending on the clothes, and on what features you want to add (e.g. custom bones for a sash) you may need to do more or less work to get that into a final state.

MelissaGT

Havos said:

Assuming the clothing is in a A pose, similar to Genesis 8, then a rapid option is to make the clothing dForce only, if it is not extremely heavy on the polygons. Then just scale the outfit to roughly fit the desired figure, and run a simulation. Alternatively scale/morph/pose the figure to fit the clothing, then return the figure to their own shape during the simulation run. The latter method can also be used to get non-A pose clothing into the std A pose shape before rigging.

Of course rigging the clothes is a better option if it is an item you will use a lot.

I have rigged stuff before using the transfer utility, and it tends to work alright for tighter fitting clothing, but it often will distort quite badily for extreme poses. This is where you need to add weight maps to help, but I don't know much about that subject.

Yeah, I'm not looking to do a dress or anything like that...it'd be pretty much leather tunics and armor, etc...stuff with metal pieces that I wouldn't want bending. So like this...not this precisely, but stuff like this - 

Greycat

I'm going to assume that this fits as close as possible to an unaltered gen 8 basic male. Make sure to have both clothing item and gen 8 basic male loaded, then do the following:

Edit -> object -> rigging -> convert prop to figure

A box will come up just accept.

Then use transfer utility

MelissaGT

Greycat said:

I'm going to assume that this fits as close as possible to an unaltered gen 8 basic male. Make sure to have both clothing item and gen 8 basic male loaded, then do the following:

Edit -> object -> rigging -> convert prop to figure

A box will come up just accept.

Then use transfer utility

Again...how will that ensure that rigid (metal) objects and things like the shoulders etc don't completely distort when posing the figure? Doesn't that require weight mapping? If it's going to bend and stretch oddly when I pose the figure, then it's not worth it for me. There's so much stuff in the store that does this...which is a large part of the reason I'm in this boat because I can't/won't use it. 

felis

Unless you wnat to do it fully dForce, I don't think you cn avoid to adjust weight maps.

Especially if you have some parts further away from the body - they will usually always require adjustment.

 

And regarding items you want to avoid distortion, you need to do Rigidity maps.

The only documentation I have found is this: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/rigging/tutorials/rigidity/start

And I have never really got to using it, so I can't help with an actual guidance.

Greycat

MelissaGT said:

Greycat said:

I'm going to assume that this fits as close as possible to an unaltered gen 8 basic male. Make sure to have both clothing item and gen 8 basic male loaded, then do the following:

Edit -> object -> rigging -> convert prop to figure

A box will come up just accept.

Then use transfer utility

Again...how will that ensure that rigid (metal) objects and things like the shoulders etc don't completely distort when posing the figure? Doesn't that require weight mapping? If it's going to bend and stretch oddly when I pose the figure, then it's not worth it for me. There's so much stuff in the store that does this...which is a large part of the reason I'm in this boat because I can't/won't use it. 

The figure rigging put the bones in, the transfer utility adds in the weight  maps. Once you get the clothing that far you have to modifly the rigging and weight maps, which I take it is beyond your abilities. If you really want to get in to this I would suggest the following;

Rigging Original Figures in DS4 Pro | Daz 3D

Rigidity Grouping and Mapping in DS 4.5+ | Daz 3D

Advanced Rigging in DAZ Studio 4 Pro | Daz 3D

marble

Going back to the OP, the emphasis as I read it was on a request for a tutorial. I'm also quite interested because I have Marvelous Designer and I have also looked enviously at ArtStation items but I want them in DAZ Studio as "native" products (i.e. rigged, wieght-mapped, etc.). I looked (just now) on YouTube and there are some tutorials but few that take you through all the steps. But I'll keep looking because I seem to get different results on different days with YouTube. So any links would be welcome.

Here's one that starts with an MD garment but I guess it would apply equally to an ArtStation purchase:

MelissaGT

Greycat said:

MelissaGT said:

Greycat said:

I'm going to assume that this fits as close as possible to an unaltered gen 8 basic male. Make sure to have both clothing item and gen 8 basic male loaded, then do the following:

Edit -> object -> rigging -> convert prop to figure

A box will come up just accept.

Then use transfer utility

Again...how will that ensure that rigid (metal) objects and things like the shoulders etc don't completely distort when posing the figure? Doesn't that require weight mapping? If it's going to bend and stretch oddly when I pose the figure, then it's not worth it for me. There's so much stuff in the store that does this...which is a large part of the reason I'm in this boat because I can't/won't use it. 

The figure rigging put the bones in, the transfer utility adds in the weight  maps. Once you get the clothing that far you have to modifly the rigging and weight maps, which I take it is beyond your abilities. If you really want to get in to this I would suggest the following;

Rigging Original Figures in DS4 Pro | Daz 3D

Rigidity Grouping and Mapping in DS 4.5+ | Daz 3D

Advanced Rigging in DAZ Studio 4 Pro | Daz 3D

Yes, I am capable of using the transfer utility, however I had always assumed that was the 'lazy man' way of getting non-rigged clothing to work on a Daz figure. I was hoping to be pointed to a guide in order to learn the complete way, so that the clothing will move properly and not turn to spaghetti when posing the figure...meaning I don't want metallic belt buckles and o-rings to turn to oval rings or triangle rings once the figure moves from the base A position...which happens on far too many clothing pieces in the store today.  Who knows, if I can learn how to rig garments well, maybe I'll get an interest in making clothing from scratch for myself...and then who knows, maybe you guys would want to buy it! :P

Greycat

No, you don't understand, the rigging and transfer utility commands will get you a rigged figure. You could manually rigged a figure, but I don't why you'd want to do that. Once you have this generally rigged figure you need to fine tune it. Thats the hard part. I'm still trying to learn how to do that. I'm hoping you don't give up just because it's hard and keep trying to figure it out.

Richard Haseltine

Keeping hard objects hard is usually a matter of weight-mapping - making sure that the whole item has uniform weights 9and then adding JCMs to avoid poke-through). Some items, with only a single point of attachment, can be separate props parented to Rigid Follow Nodes. The Transfer Utility will put the bones in the right place and should give you a decent set of starting weights, at least for areas thata re not rigid or far from the figure skin - after that it's a matter of hand editing (weights, custom bones, follow nodes, JCMs...) to polish the results.

MelissaGT

Greycat said:

No, you don't understand, the rigging and transfer utility commands will get you a rigged figure. You could manually rigged a figure, but I don't why you'd want to do that. Once you have this generally rigged figure you need to fine tune it. Thats the hard part. I'm still trying to learn how to do that. I'm hoping you don't give up just because it's hard and keep trying to figure it out.

Ah ok...so even when someone makes their own clothing for Daz, they start out with the transfer utility to rig it and then tweak it...and the more tweaking, the better the result when the figure is posed. Yeah, I'd love to learn how to do that bit. Maybe even fix clothing that I've purchased and can't use because of said spaghetti problem.  

MelissaGT

Richard Haseltine said:

Keeping hard objects hard is usually a matter of weight-mapping - making sure that the whole item has uniform weights 9and then adding JCMs to avoid poke-through). Some items, with only a single point of attachment, can be separate props parented to Rigid Follow Nodes. The Transfer Utility will put the bones in the right place and should give you a decent set of starting weights, at least for areas thata re not rigid or far from the figure skin - after that it's a matter of hand editing (weights, custom bones, follow nodes, JCMs...) to polish the results.

Yeah, I do mostly medieval fantasy stuff and sadly that clothing seems to get it pretty bad in terms of metal pieces stretching and shoulders warping when a figure is moved out of the base A pose.  

ignasiovarga

MelissaGT said:

Ah ok...so even when someone makes their own clothing for Daz, they start out with the transfer utility to rig it and then tweak it...and the more tweaking, the better the result when the figure is posed. Yeah, I'd love to learn how to do that bit. Maybe even fix clothing that I've purchased and can't use because of said spaghetti problem.  

Dude, im in the same boat as you, have you found a soulution. I did "transfer Utility" and it just binded the clothes to the figure, now when i move the figure the clothes deform in unnatural way. If you fixed that, How?

Thank you.