Men's formal Opera cloak WIP

Roygee

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same - my first CG effort was making an animated horse in Anim8or - took six months before getting something worthwhile, but I did it:)

In those days we had a monthly challenge - every last thing in the scene had to be a home-made original, never been shown before. It was really great and I've never gotten over that way of doing things.

I do understand the instant gratification buy-pose-render crowd, but have never joined in - to me the challenge is DIY and seeing it come to fruition, even if no-one else ever sees the results:)

Tramp Graphics

Roygee said:

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same - my first CG effort was making an animated horse in Anim8or - took six months before getting something worthwhile, but I did it:)

In those days we had a monthly challenge - every last thing in the scene had to be a home-made original, never been shown before. It was really great and I've never gotten over that way of doing things.

I do understand the instant gratification buy-pose-render crowd, but have never joined in - to me the challenge is DIY and seeing it come to fruition, even if no-one else ever sees the results:)

Most of what I've been making is to fill a need for something I can't find pre-made, or is unique to a given character (such as the Night Warrior's battle glove, and Kageto's hooded Kataginu). If I can find a good piece of clothing for a given character, I'll use it in a heart beat. Tommie is a good example of that. She just needed a couple of new textures made for her shirt and hat.

This piece , of course, is one of those "needs" for a character that can't be filled with an "off-the-shelf" piece of clothing, because there are no Men's formal opera Cloaks out there to be had for Daz/Poser 3D characters, Genesis or otherwise. If I can get it finished, and get it to market, It could fill a need for a lot of other people too, since it's a generic enough garment, unlike some of my other pieces.

Tramp Graphics

I think I may have finally licked it (except, maybe for some minor tweaking to the collar). The new rig has a $#!7 load of bones to manipulate the folds—five sets, each containing a main "parent" and two paired strings of four bones each. The outer-most folds move with the figure's shoulder bones, the others must be posed manually. For an arms-down pose, the right and left folds must be lowered after the figure is posed in order eliminate clipping.

Roygee

Well done:)

So, no problem with double thickness, one layer intersecting the other?

wancow

Uhm... I'm picturing Bella Lagosi's ghost flapping that thing around :)

Tramp Graphics

Roygee said:

Well done:)

So, no problem with double thickness, one layer intersecting the other?

I did, but was able to work around that by adjusting the smoothing of the weight maps on the capelet separately. The old rigs were plagued with clipping no matter what I did with the weigh maps. There simply weren't enough bones in the right layout to work. This new rig is very poseable with minimal clipping issues to be had.

Tramp Graphics

wancow said:

Uhm... I'm picturing Bella Lagosi's ghost flapping that thing around :)

Yeah.

More like this guy (though Lagosi would rock in it too):

wancow

Loooks Fantastic Tramp!! Great Job!!!

Tramp Graphics

wancow said:

Loooks Fantastic Tramp!! Great Job!!!

Thanks. Now all I need to know is if I can use the R72 Velvet shaders I'm using to test this with, as a Merchant resource for this product. I know the World of Satin shaders are a merchant resource, so they will be used for the liners and trim (though I'm not really sure how to set up Mat presets) . But the outer "shells" for the cloak and capelet though...Those are usually wool or velvet, not satin.