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Question: earlier it was mentioned that Zbrush is usually responsible for the super smooth pretty meshes and that Blender is still really bad at them. Is there a specific name for a tool that evens out the mesh? And does Carrera have those capabilities?
I think you misunderstood what was said a bit. What was said was that zbrush creates much better meshes via automatic retopologizing than blender, but that is only something used when using a mesh that was sculpted or something coming in from a program like marvelous designer
Provided you're building the mesh up yourself, blender can absolutely create smooth meshes
In case it was retopologizing you were talking about, nothing does it like zbrush. It's one of those things that zbrush just does so much better so everyone uses and loves zbrush despite its bizzare ui
Ohh, I see what you mean. That was what I was talking about except I thought it was a tool used for cleaning up meshes in general. Thanks for clarifying.
In other words, make sure I am finished completely with the object before mapping it until I have more experience lol.
We're actually approaching an interesting point in modelling, where a lot of the technical aspects are going away. Zbrush has really led the charge with the whole dynamic topology > automatic retopologizing and oh by the way you can texture this without uvs.
Mostly I've just been doing whatever until I get the shape I want (or the main edge loops all on) and then just use a mix of ctrlR, manually moving vertices, smoothing and subd then sliding edges and removing doubles until I get the simplest shape I can that does the job and subdivides nicely. I'm sure there are many better ways, but that's about as far as I've gotten for organic shapes (mostly I've been having fun with furniture.)
Zbrush looks and sounds really interesting, but that's a seriously steep entry cost for me (as a non-professional.) It's about 7 years of what I pay for the entire Adobe suite, or 3-4 weeks of shopping on Daz (now that's a painful realisation.)
Just went and had a look at Zbrush. I didn't realize that scuptris was made by Zbrush
Ya I took one look at the price and walked away lol. No way can I justify spending that amount on something that doesn't make money (yet lol)
3dcoat also has good retopo tools. You can sculpt using voxels or a high res mesh and then create a low res mesh any way you want from that. It's also a much less expensive program than Zbrush.
I build all my meshes in ZBrush from scratch. One of the tricks for getting a really straight UV is to build your mesh very boxy, UV it and then form it to the shape your building it for. Now if you turn around and ZRemesh it then your UV work will be gone because even if you use the SAME button to keep the same amount of verts the order will be different. I often end up not liking the uv's generated from ZBrush, allot of the times, if map it using the polygroup option you end up with the maps all over the place. I bought a little known program called Ultimate Unwrap3D UV Pro and it's my go too program for UV mapping. The guy continues to support it and does listen to ideas and if he likes them he will update the program to include them (like my idea of exporting maps to JPG or PNG rather than just to PSD or BMP).
I do my UV mapping and materials assignment as a final step in Blender because yes, Zbrush eats UVs and mat groups.
Oh, yeah: the Poser 5+ cloth room can use any ordinary mesh. It's the DS4 "cloth room" that's finnicky about that.
Crazy thing is, Mudbox (by AutoDesk, the King-Of-All-Things-CAD and self-annointed Design Industry Leader, also owner fo 3DS-Max and Maya) is barely over half the price per solo-user license that Z-Brush is.
I figured I should upload something to show that we can be sort of actually productive.
I don't expect anyone to approve of or be impressed by (or even understand) the way I make things.
I'm now dithering between adding more styling as actual modelling or just leaving it basic and getting to the what is rigging part so that then I can model something actually useful. I do want to at least add buttons so I can mess with the horror of rigid attachments.
Ix. Great stuff. Thank you so much for joining in. I love your captions. And the fact that "decide what to make" is number 9 instead of number 1 made my morning, LOL. You are doing a great job. A vest is the perfect project.
I encourage anyone and everyone who wants to play along to continue to search for reference materials similar to the #9 in Ix's attachment. You dont have to start modeling yet, in fact I am not starting my official model yet. However, I do doodle with my modeler based on some of the reference material that I found. All of these items were derived from my saved envelope mesh.
Remember my CRAPPY GLOVES? Well, here is an entire set of CRAPPY VINTAGE SPEEDWAY OUTFIT. Here are some of the elements that I found in my background research.
CRAPPY SPEEDWAY OUTFIT (called crappy because still just doodling - eg., no wrinkles or other details)
- Pants front has a panel with two rows of buttons, and then a strap and buckle in back that can be adjusted to fit slim and fat people.
- Pant legs will be close fitting, not the wide thighs like WWI pilots or horse riders.
- Boots have no straps or buckles, and rise high on shin.
- Pants tuck inside boots.
- Undershirt in tank top style.
- My crappy gloves from before with no cuff, and the option with alpha map to remove thumb and fingers.
- Coat with overlapping front, with two vertical rows of buttons.
- Coat also has high collar that can dangle a medallion.
- Coat has seams at shoulders and seams for cuffs.
- Racing cap can also be used to create a villainous mask.
- May add an optional overcoat or cape for more potential for a villainous character. Of course, villainy would depend on a second texture set.
- Needs goggles!
In some ways, this outfit has similarities to The Rocketeer and to WWI pilot uniforms. Anyway, I encourage more people who want to play along to post some of their reference material and other background research. I will probably keep doodling and experimenting with different ideas at least through the weekend. For example, I think that either the pants or the coat need pockets.
Personally, I am still inviting conceptual suggestions. Constructive criticism definitely invited. I will probably finalize my own conceptual idea this weekend. Then I will start on the actual meshes of the models.
Awesome stuff, diomede. Now I feel super slow xD And thanks for taking the time to look at my beginnings. I've never really done clothing before, but regardless I tend to not plan out anything and just start moving vertices around until I get an idea for what I might be interested in. For reference images, I used my newfound love pinterest and searched "male vest" and found a whole range of photos which I won't use and lovely infographics explaining the tiny details of what makes suits work, which is what my reference image is from.
p.s. In case it wasn't obvious, I have no idea what I'm doing, so any feedback on what I should be doing or adding is appreciated.
Ix, don't feel slow at all. you are doing great. As mentioned by several others above, it is best to start simple. Even though I am doodling an entire outfit right now, when it comes time to start for real, I will follow the advice to pick just one item, a simple one, and go through the steps for that. For example, if you do a vest, I could start with the undershirt. I found some hilarious ads for underwear.
Wow!!! 35 cents for a pattern?!!! Now, I have to watch the sales and I'm lucky if I can get one for under $5. Love the waistband on those undershorts!!!
Question
Which would be easier, a coat that opens on the side with a double row of buttons like my doodle above, or a coat that opens in the middle with straps with buckles instead of buttons? I think straps would more easily accommodate both a racer and a villain. If you look more closely at my Bob Burman inspirational print above, his top has a more simple version of the following.
Suggestions?
Also, it would help distinguish more from the Rocketeer.
OMG! If you can get some nice open morph going on that, I'm first in line to get it.
Ditto!!! I don't know about which would be easier, though. I would think each has it's own challenges especially if you plan on doing any morphs to ope the jacket. I really like the buckle one myself.
Liked your Farmerboy render, Knittingmommy. Kind of reminded me of Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Looks great! I am working my way through some vidoes and hope to try something soon
This is doodling? Good grief lol! Well I am going to continue to follow along and work on learning this anyway
The pinnacle of good clothing design, for me, is the Ultra Bodysuit ( http://www.daz3d.com/ultra-bodysuit-for-genesis-2-female-s )
It is ASTONISHINGLY well-done, with a host of morphs to turn it into all sorts of different things. Moreover, the carefully layed out and labeled material zones make it INCREDIBLY easy to design all sorts of styles without ever having to touch texture maps. (Although you can, of course, fancy things up with different texture maps)
Granted, I'm not sure everyone wants to spend 1-3 years (or however long that thing took) to design clothing, but... wow. That's the high bar.
As they say, it's easy to model clothing but getting it rigged and weight mapped properly, that's the trick that's quite off putting to allot of us. I keep asking DAZ to make more and more improvements to the creation tools but they are more into shiny NEW things and now this "Connect" stuff....... perhaps some day they will revisit the creation tools with new imroved ways to get the jobs done quickly and mo better! lol
This is much more reasonable
this one is actually high on my wishlist
What is you're issue with rigging and weightmapping in daz? I honestly find it kind of criminally easy, especially in comparison to modelling. Men's stuff, which tends to be tighter and not have skirts in general, is even easier.
Well I'm not technically savvy so this is my sore spot. I'm not making stuff for Genesis but for Hivewire and since their figures work in both DS and Poser I can't take shortcuts or depend on smoothing to making things appear to work fine. I actually don't add a smoothing modifier until the very end and that's only for the DS users benefit so getting weight mapping, JCM's and rigging working VERY well out of the box can be a bit time consuming to say the least. Stuff like this, for those that have been at it a lot longer than I have, is second nature but for my old brain it's like walking a 100 lbs bowling ball uphill!
Hey, great! Finally, someone for whom rigging G3 clothes is easy. How's the multilayered floor-length robe with dangling sleeves and matching high-heeled boots coming? Is there a matching bi-layered loincloth?