How do you use d-force in an animation?

surv0101

I have been getting mixed results learning to use d-force in an animation. I'm starting to think, I am not doing it right, or at least not the best way. All the tutorials I have seen, brush over the use of d-force when animating very quickly and are not very specific, so sorry if these questions seem very basic. 

So I have a scene with a man and a woman dancing. Both have d-force outfits, and both have d-force hair. I have gone as far as I wish with the basic movements of the two on the timeline. Without the d-force applied, the animation would be ready to render. So now, do I hide all the d-force objects except for one, run a simulation for the entire timeline, and repeat for each outfit, and hair? When all four items have been simulated, do you just render out the entire scene at this point? This is what I have been doing so far, but even if I go frame by frame making sure nothing clips and everything looks good, in my final render I always get a clip, or a jump, that ruins the whole animation. Does anyone have a workflow or tips they might want to share? If I do simulate each outfit and hair separately, it will take about 20 hours, and I haven't even started to render the scene...is this normal and should be expected?

crosswind

surv0101 said:

I have been getting mixed results learning to use d-force in an animation. I'm starting to think, I am not doing it right, or at least not the best way. All the tutorials I have seen, brush over the use of d-force when animating very quickly and are not very specific, so sorry if these questions seem very basic. 

So I have a scene with a man and a woman dancing. Both have d-force outfits, and both have d-force hair. I have gone as far as I wish with the basic movements of the two on the timeline. Without the d-force applied, the animation would be ready to render. So now, do I hide all the d-force objects except for one, run a simulation for the entire timeline, and repeat for each outfit, and hair?

No you don't have to do so unless there's a very problematic simulation....

When all four items have been simulated, do you just render out the entire scene at this point?

In most of the cases, yes.

This is what I have been doing so far, but even if I go frame by frame making sure nothing clips and everything looks good, in my final render I always get a clip, or a jump, that ruins the whole animation. Does anyone have a workflow or tips they might want to share?

What do you mean a clip, a jump ? Poke-through or mesh diformation ?

If I do simulate each outfit and hair separately, it will take about 20 hours, and I haven't even started to render the scene...is this normal and should be expected?

Not really... but a few factors can drastically slow down the simulation:  your Nvidia card, heavy wearables on the figures, high smoothing iteration on garments, bad collision in between meshes (e.g. garments with high mesh density, mesh collide with some hairs...), bad settings on dynamic surfaces.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I do one item at a time, freeze simulation on it and then do the next layer and also have at least 30 setup frames from the base pose leading into the animation rather than start from memorised pose

Dforce is very explosive so setting things like fingers to not visible in simulation helps, also close fitted surfaces I set to zero strength, use a dforce modifier weight node on skirts especially with smoothing transitioning from the waist, I often hide parts during simulation if they will collide or get too close if those parts don't have that dforce cloth on them (eg arms when doing skirts)

sadly, some clothes I just cannot use in animation no matter what I do