Thoughts about modeling clothes for G9

Enchanted April

When we create clothes we should model them for the base figure, say G8F. This is the average woman, but clearly a woman with waist, breast, etc, all where it should be. We bring the garment into DAZ Studio, use Transfer Utility, do all the necessary work and with any luck it will fit all the female characters.

But then how will that work with G9? I can't for the life of me imagine tailoring elegant or sexy or historically accurate clothing to this ugly mixed body. I fear it will be a wild guess and mess. Where will the waist go, what about a delicate top, what about all the proportions? Because I'm a dressmaker in real life, I also use real patterns in Marvelous Designer. I guess that won't work then. 
Texture distortions especially over the bust have been a problem before. Surely with a flatter starting point like G9 this will be much worse.
I really hope there will be the possibility to use the female or male base figure as a basis for the corresponding clothing. It can not be that every little summer dress or Tudor bodice must also fit all men and vice versa. To dress "George" in a pink ballet tutu is probably a rare exception! Very rare!

I would like to see the option to choose the appropriate starting figure for gender specific clothing and the G9 unimesh figure for unisex clothing such as work clothes or everyday clothes like shirts and pants etc, which then makes it easier to fit everyone. I am curious how the content creators see this...

 

 

plasma_ring

I assume you'll be able to dial in the morph for the shape you want to fit the clothing to. It's just a slider. Can you not currently dial in morphs to fit clothing to a specific body shape with G8? I was under the impression that's how clothing creators support the core characters and the core body morph pack. 

As someone who uses male and female clothing across both G8 models, I am in no way expecting vendors and content creators to go out of their way to fit every outfit they make to every body type. I expect everyone to make what sells and what they want to make, and I imagine a lot of that will be feminine clothing for the female morph. I'll pick and choose pieces I want from those sets like I do now, only I won't have to fight with autofit. 

 

Masterstroke

Enchanted April said:

When we create clothes we should model them for the base figure, say G8F. This is the average woman, but clearly a woman with waist, breast, etc, all where it should be. We bring the garment into DAZ Studio, use Transfer Utility, do all the necessary work and with any luck it will fit all the female characters.

But then how will that work with G9? I can't for the life of me imagine tailoring elegant or sexy or historically accurate clothing to this ugly mixed body. I fear it will be a wild guess and mess. Where will the waist go, what about a delicate top, what about all the proportions? Because I'm a dressmaker in real life, I also use real patterns in Marvelous Designer. I guess that won't work then. 
Texture distortions especially over the bust have been a problem before. Surely with a flatter starting point like G9 this will be much worse.
I really hope there will be the possibility to use the female or male base figure as a basis for the corresponding clothing. It can not be that every little summer dress or Tudor bodice must also fit all men and vice versa. To dress "George" in a pink ballet tutu is probably a rare exception! Very rare!

I would like to see the option to choose the appropriate starting figure for gender specific clothing and the G9 unimesh figure for unisex clothing such as work clothes or everyday clothes like shirts and pants etc, which then makes it easier to fit everyone. I am curious how the content creators see this...

 

 

I think, you have a point with this. I didn't like the unisex model on Genesis and I don't like it on G9. 
There might be lots of pros on G9, but the unisex mesh and the lack of a lot of edge loops are major cons.

background

Since the transfer utility adapts bones and weight maps from a 'base' figure to any clothing mesh designed to fit on  that base, then maybe there will be options in the transfer utility to specify what shape ( female, male child etc) the clothing was made to fit. So if that were true you could create your clothing around a female base , and then the transfer utility would deal with adapting that to the universal base. The result would be, your clothing would fit fine on the base female shape, but might be less than fine on base male shape.

Leana

background said:

Since the transfer utility adapts bones and weight maps from a 'base' figure to any clothing mesh designed to fit on  that base, then maybe there will be options in the transfer utility to specify what shape ( female, male child etc) the clothing was made to fit. So if that were true you could create your clothing around a female base , and then the transfer utility would deal with adapting that to the universal base. The result would be, your clothing would fit fine on the base female shape, but might be less than fine on base male shape.

You can already do that now

Sevrin

Enchanted April said:

When we create clothes we should model them for the base figure, say G8F. This is the average woman, but clearly a woman with waist, breast, etc, all where it should be. We bring the garment into DAZ Studio, use Transfer Utility, do all the necessary work and with any luck it will fit all the female characters.

But then how will that work with G9? I can't for the life of me imagine tailoring elegant or sexy or historically accurate clothing to this ugly mixed body. I fear it will be a wild guess and mess. Where will the waist go, what about a delicate top, what about all the proportions? Because I'm a dressmaker in real life, I also use real patterns in Marvelous Designer. I guess that won't work then. 
Texture distortions especially over the bust have been a problem before. Surely with a flatter starting point like G9 this will be much worse.
I really hope there will be the possibility to use the female or male base figure as a basis for the corresponding clothing. It can not be that every little summer dress or Tudor bodice must also fit all men and vice versa. To dress "George" in a pink ballet tutu is probably a rare exception! Very rare!

I would like to see the option to choose the appropriate starting figure for gender specific clothing and the G9 unimesh figure for unisex clothing such as work clothes or everyday clothes like shirts and pants etc, which then makes it easier to fit everyone. I am curious how the content creators see this...

 

 

I believe that Daz PAs are required to work on the neutral G9 base figure.   At least that's what one of the PAs told us in discord.

plasma_ring

Stuff is fine if it's less-than-fine IMO. I can't speak for everyone who uses cross-gender content regularly, but the main complaints I've discussed with other people are not "can George wear a tutu perfectly" but "can I use this item on a male character at all without it breaking or needing hours of work to look good, or should I just learn to make it myself since the chances of there ever being a G8M version are vanishingly slim?" The only cases where I imagine most people would be picky about stuff working 100% the same on both shapes would be things like gender-neutral creature addon kits. 

There are two issues that make using customization options across different figures a huge pain, and G9 appears to address both of them: 

• Complex clothing and accessories are often warped beyond useability by autofit. It works best on basic items like pants and shirts. Items like body chains or even straps? If they're anywhere near a part of the body that moves and stretches, they are now made of rubber and superglued to your character. It's pretty cool for what it is, but there's a lot of stuff (like shoes!) that it just can't handle. As far as I can tell this mostly has to do with the weight mapping that determines which parts stretch to accommodate figure movement; I believe the original setup gets replaced by a basic version of whatever works for the figure you're transferring to. You can correct this a tiny bit manually, but in my experience there's only so much you can do to edit bits that shouldn't be influenced before it turns to spaghetti.
• This is more of an issue with things like geografts, but a lot of stuff just won't load on a figure it's not intended for and trying to kitbash it through parenting it to the figure or whatnot only works if it's easy to hide the fact that it's not attached the way it should be. In some cases not loading right breaks the basic functionality and materials won't load properly on it, etc. 

G9 has the same topology no matter which morph you dial in, so the improvement is removing those technical barriers. The idea that it's going to be harder to make clothing that works on two morphs that are roughly the same weight and height with slightly different muscle mass and body composition when my boyfriend here can seamlessly use the same customization options as the G8M base makes me feel like I must be missing something. This is an interesting example of clothing that was made for a shape that is vastly different from G8M but also has fits for multiple different body types. Whatever the process is for supporting specific shapes, I imagine it would also be what you'd do if you wanted to create clothing for a specific gender morph. 

I mean, this is one of my characters customized from the male G8.1 base, and he's using clothing, hair, and textures originally made for G8F. His clothes I did custom fit morphs for in ZBrush. I've used him as an avatar in MD (badly, because I'm new), and if I need to make or fit something for him specifically I do it using his morph so it looks right. He differs way, way more from his base figure's shape than either of the G9 morphs do from each other, but when I do use G8M items on him they work fine. Any distortion is usually easily fixed by dialing out whatever adjustment morph is causing issues. 

 

Pendraia

It would be the same as when you create a custom morph. Dial in whichever gender you require and build the mesh on that. Just make sure to select reverse deformations when you send it back. 

Linwelly

a bit off topic

I wish real world clothing designers would accept that not every woman has that very female form, would solve a lot of my clothing woes

please continue

Diomede

Is the following correct based on what I am reading above?

One could 

1) Model clothing mesh for targeted gender (base male 9 or female 9).

2) Adjust the mesh and save separately for (a) the default unigender 9, and for (b) the other gender (base male 9 or base female 9)

3) Rig clothing mesh once for the targeted gender in transfer utility, and use 'reverse deformation' or similar to get to default uni-gender rigging based on targeted gender mesh.

4) Substitute your adjusted uni-gender 9 mesh obj from (step 2) for the mesh attached to transfer utility rigging of uni-gender 9 outcomes in (step 3), just like it was a character full body morph.

5) Treat the non-target-gender 9 base (male or female) like it was a supported character full body morph and substitute its adjusted obj from step 2.

6) Adjust weightmaps for all 3 base versions (female 9, male 9, and unigender 9).

7) Repeat obj substitutions and rigging adjustments for other full body morph supported characters like Victoria 9, Michael 9, Aiko 9, Brute 9,...

Seems like a lot of extra work for the PAs, but cross-gender use should be a lot easier.  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be even easier than that?  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be a lot harder than that?  Still a little confused, but I think I see a work flow. 

I hope that more information is forthcoming and would appreciate thoughts on a workflow.

Mada

There will be a workflow for people who prefer working on a more gendered shape, as well as for draping in Marvelous Designer. I will make some videos closer to the release date. :) It was one of my main concerns as well but I'm very happy now with results.

Diomede

Mada said:

There will be a workflow for people who prefer working on a more gendered shape, as well as for draping in Marvelous Designer. I will make some videos closer to the release date. :) It was one of my main concerns as well but I'm very happy now with results.

That would be amazingly great!  Thanks in advance.

Enchanted April

My sincere thanks to all contributors to this thread. It seems to be an exciting thing how this problem will be solved. Your ideas sound good. And special thanks to @Mada in advance. I look forward to your tips and suggestions!

barbult

Mada said:

There will be a workflow for people who prefer working on a more gendered shape, as well as for draping in Marvelous Designer. I will make some videos closer to the release date. :) It was one of my main concerns as well but I'm very happy now with results.

Wonderful! Your video tutorials are top notch and always very helpful. Thank you.

Pendraia

Diomede said:

Is the following correct based on what I am reading above?

One could 

1) Model clothing mesh for targeted gender (base male 9 or female 9).

2) Adjust the mesh and save separately for (a) the default unigender 9, and for (b) the other gender (base male 9 or base female 9)

3) Rig clothing mesh once for the targeted gender in transfer utility, and use 'reverse deformation' or similar to get to default uni-gender rigging based on targeted gender mesh.

4) Substitute your adjusted uni-gender 9 mesh obj from (step 2) for the mesh attached to transfer utility rigging of uni-gender 9 outcomes in (step 3), just like it was a character full body morph.

5) Treat the non-target-gender 9 base (male or female) like it was a supported character full body morph and substitute its adjusted obj from step 2.

6) Adjust weightmaps for all 3 base versions (female 9, male 9, and unigender 9).

7) Repeat obj substitutions and rigging adjustments for other full body morph supported characters like Victoria 9, Michael 9, Aiko 9, Brute 9,...

Seems like a lot of extra work for the PAs, but cross-gender use should be a lot easier.  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be even easier than that?  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be a lot harder than that?  Still a little confused, but I think I see a work flow. 

I hope that more information is forthcoming and would appreciate thoughts on a workflow.

Sounds right to me. 

In regards to workflow some of that will depend on what type of item you're making. If it's obviously feminine clothing you might only ensure that it works with the male base as you wouldn't expect it to be used with male characters unless there are characters who would identify as feminine. Then you might include them.

Initially there won't be a lot of characters so you'll most likely be looking at ensuring it works with the base, the female base and the male base plus whichever figures you prefer to include.

When asking about which core figures need to be included in genesis 8 I was told it was up to the person creating the outfit.

There are too many core figures to do them all and not everyone will own them all unless they get provided to the vendor by Daz. Hivewire would provide the base character to vendors who were trying to make stuff but they were in a different situation to Daz. I don't know what the vendors here are provided with or at what cost.

Once the morphs are released you would want to create custom morphs for any that needed to be done. You would have to test eache morph to see if it required a custom morph.

I'm trying to work out my own workflow for creating at the moment. 

Esha's series of tutorials can be very useful I have her rigging one. Which I've find helpful and I also have Arki's one for complex garments using dforce.

Enchanted April

Ha! I've just got an email with the announcement for a special DAZ+ live stream tomorrow: "Creating a Genesis 9 outfit" with Jay and Fugazi. What a coincidence! 14:00 MDT!

 

Diomede

Thanks, @Pendraia, for the feedback, and @Mada for... wow, everything.

Note to Daz+ Members.  There is an announcement that for Daz+ members Jay Versluis will be hosting John Holding (aka Fugazi1968) on Saturday September 24  to go through an example of making an outfit for Gensis 9 as it stands now.  It is #9 in the first post of the Daz+ Pro Artist Series thread list stickied at the top of the Daz+ Forum.  I point Daz+ members to that forum for specifics on the time, etc.

Pendraia

Can people who aren't daz+ members watch it? If so what time is it at?

@Diomede no problem, happy to help. I'm still learning too!

Diomede

Pendraia said:

Can people who aren't daz+ members watch it? If so what time is it at?

@Diomede no problem, happy to help. I'm still learning too!

I don't know if or how viewership is limited.  The John Holding (Fugazi1968) event was discussed during the big Genesis 9 announcement webinar so it can't be a secret.  But I suppose they limit access.  The link I saw and am referring to is in the sub-forum for Daz+ members, which I only see when I am logged in. 

Enchanted April

Pendraia said:

Can people who aren't daz+ members watch it? If so what time is it at?

@Diomede no problem, happy to help. I'm still learning too!

Its on YT and Vimeo 14:00 MDT. I think you can watch it, if not then later the upload but probably without the chat stream.

Pendraia

thanks Enchanted April...I'll check it out. Now the hard part to convert to Australian time.

Enchanted April

Pendraia said:

thanks Enchanted April...I'll check it out. Now the hard part to convert to Australian time.

Saturday 06:00 in Canberra! A very good morning then ;)

Pendraia

Yeah 6am in Melbourne also...tricky part will be getting up that early, since I've retired I get up later and my body clock has adapted to the later time.

Rod Wise Driggo

Might not fit in here but I did not find specific thread. How can one use Gen9 clothing on G8F/G8M. I bought my first pieces of clothing for Gen9 but are not ready yet to embrace Gen9-characterwise. On the other hand there are first clothing items which came out in dedicated 8 and 9 versions. So I would prefer buying 9 to have them "future-proof" but on the other hand use them now on Gen8.

AllenArt

Rod Wise Driggo said:

Might not fit in here but I did not find specific thread. How can one use Gen9 clothing on G8F/G8M. I bought my first pieces of clothing for Gen9 but are not ready yet to embrace Gen9-characterwise. On the other hand there are first clothing items which came out in dedicated 8 and 9 versions. So I would prefer buying 9 to have them "future-proof" but on the other hand use them now on Gen8.

There is a tutorial in the freebies section on how to make a G9 clone for G8/8.1 that's super easy. Worked for me the first time and I'm about the most "technologically deficient" you could meet. LOL 

UncannyValet

Is there any documentation anywhere about how making clothing for Gen 9 differs from Gen 8?

I imagine there might be discussions and info provided to PA's "behind closed doors" but not everyone who makes content or has ambitions to become a new PA will be privy to that information...

AllenArt

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/597726/genesis-9-clothing-questions-answers/p1

Rod Wise Driggo

AllenArt said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

Might not fit in here but I did not find specific thread. How can one use Gen9 clothing on G8F/G8M. I bought my first pieces of clothing for Gen9 but are not ready yet to embrace Gen9-characterwise. On the other hand there are first clothing items which came out in dedicated 8 and 9 versions. So I would prefer buying 9 to have them "future-proof" but on the other hand use them now on Gen8.

There is a tutorial in the freebies section on how to make a G9 clone for G8/8.1 that's super easy. Worked for me the first time and I'm about the most "technologically deficient" you could meet. LOL 

Thank you. Actually never explored the Freebie section until now. Seems there is a lot to find there ;-)

Pushee-Ri

Stupido3D said:

Is there any documentation anywhere about how making clothing for Gen 9 differs from Gen 8?

I imagine there might be discussions and info provided to PA's "behind closed doors" but not everyone who makes content or has ambitions to become a new PA will be privy to that information...

Hi - and a happy new year to You!

I've opened a new thread on this topic. It's not solved or closed yet. You may already find some tips there that are useful for you. I suggest reading the thread from the beginning.

I promised to create a tutorial (HTML or PDF) when a (or "the") solution was found. You might want to bookmark the thread for that reason:

How to rig and save new clothes for GF9 AND Victoria 9?

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/612071/how-to-rig-and-save-new-clothes-for-gf9-and-victoria-9#latest

 

PrefoX

Linwelly said:

a bit off topic

I wish real world clothing designers would accept that not every woman has that very female form, would solve a lot of my clothing woes

please continue

they do I think but they have do go with the mainstream too, and most women have female attributes I guess