Possible problem with Michael 4 for G2M
Jim_1831252
Posts: 728
Let me start by saying that I'm really getting into the whole spirit of G2 and our latest member. I'm also generally happy with Michael 4 for G2M, but I have noticed there are some... imperfections. So far all the clothes I have have tried fit great. Boots are pretty good too. The biggest problem I have run across is with gloves.
I've looked at multiple sets of gloves and none of them look great around the tips of the fingers. I've attached a a G1 and G2M picture using the Cyberpunk for M4 limbs.
I'm also attaching a G2M and G2F image of boot autofits. So far it looks like the autofit for G2F is generally better quality, but I have seen some instances where the G2F fits are less than optimal
Basically I'm wondering if other have similar experiences as my own.
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In the end you are converting clothing from one figure to another. I've been using conversion apps since the P4/PPP days. First The Tailor and then on to Clothes Convertor and Wardrobe Wizard. In the end a conversion is just that. A conversion. If you compare a conversion to the original conformer applied to the model is was created and rigged for, you will almost always find flaws. It's the nature of the beast.
Undoubtedly yes, there are always issues with any auto refit method, but the point is that the conversion for glove-like items is much better for M4 > G1 than it is for M4 > G2. I'm not expecting perfection, but getting as close as possible is definitely something I'd like to see. In this case it would be matching what G1 gets. Boots look pretty good, and that can "easily" be fixed with d-formers, Can the fit be improved? Maybe, maybe not. But the gloves...
To demonstrate further here's a screen capture of G2F wearing gear punk gloves. Perfect? No, but pretty darn good.
Idea: Just to see what happens, try fitting the gloves M4>G1, then fitting the result to G2.
It may help to check the hidden properties of the clothing and dial out any unnecessary body morphs from the clothing.
Hmm, that is interesting. The gloves I have in my collection came out nicely, but then there are so many that I don't have to experiment with. Same goes for shoes. I know there is a pair of boots that load one foot at a time that I simply cannot get to work with autofit. They won't even line up with the legs, that's how bad it is and they point down to M4 zero pose. Have no idea why.
I will take a closer look at the gloves situation, but in the meantime would you mind trying to add a smoothing modifier to the gloves and tell me if that helps? The smoothing modifier can be added through the submenu in the scene tab under Edit:Geometry:Add Smoothing Modifier
This should help many of your clothing issues to look better, not just the M4 clothes. Most Genesis and Genesis 2 clothing already has a modifier added, but of course none of the M4 or V4 stuff created long ago will have that.
Again, I will look into the gloves issue, maybe even pick up the set you used in your example. Thanks for bringing it to my attention :)
Upon closer inspection, I do see that there are some serious glove issues that I can hopefully improve. I would like to wait at least a week or so before release an update, in case more issues are brought to attention. I would rather not release 3 or 4 updates, as you might understand. Plus, it might take me that long to fix it ;)
In the meantime, I do apologize. As I said before, it's hard to test every scenario when you don't own a large library of clothing, and the gloves I tried did look good to me, but as with any product I must fix problems as they are brought to my attention.
Hey Slosh- congrats on your products! You are a very responsible, responsive vendor and I always know when I buy your stuff that I'm in good hands. I'll just dub you "Allstate." :)
Cathie
Thanks, Cathie. Always love hearing from you. You are a very refreshing, positive voice in the community. As far as this issue goes, I won't lie. I am a bit stumped right now, but I am working on it as we speak. By the time I am finished, I hope to not only improve this product, but maybe discover some secrets to autofit that might benefit the feature as a whole. But, maybe I'm dreaming too big :)
Slosh- Back at you dude :) You've helped out many times when I needed you. Check your PM.
Cathie
Thank you for looking into this, and trying to correct it.
Just a little update to keep everyone in the loop. I have been fiddling with this and have made some improvements already in the gloves and also in the shoes and clothing fits. I thought they were great before, but then I'm biased, however with a few minor changes I made while playing around, I found a better fitting clone. The gloves now no longer have the webbed areas between fingers, but I still need to work on the fingertips collapsing (can't think of a better description). I have some ideas, just haven't tried them out yet do to a distraction in regular life. Soon, is what I say, but that is a Slosh soon, so it actually does mean "in a very short time."
Thanks for your patience (everyone).
@ Murgatroyd: it is slightly better this way. I used to use this method for converting boots to work better with G1.
@ Slosh: Thanks for jumping in here. I'm glad to see you're on it and making progress. I very much appreciate it when content creators take the time to review their products post release. Don't know if it is still relevant but the image with the Cyberpunk limb did have a smoothing modifier applied to it. Also converted to subd when that didn't make magic.
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I'm so glad to hear you are having success with it. And please, do post to this thread if you discover any horrible problems. My updates are going well, still fiddling with the fingers, but I'm getting there. I want to post a tutorial, possibly a video, to my Free Video Tutorials thread which would highlight some tips and tricks for getting the most out of AutoFit. So busy right now, though, especially with this new release, but also on some future products.
Unfortunately I am finding quiet a few problems.
Here is a screen shot of the Midnight Hunter coat autofitted on both Genesis and Genesis 2 Male, both have problems but the G2M is unusable.
Both have smoothing applied.
Its when I apply smoothing that things often break up using G2M
I will attempt to see if I can recreate this issue with coats that I have in my runtime. In the meantime, would you answer a couple of questions for me regarding this garment? These questions might or might not be part of the problem, but I need as much info as I can get.
1. Is the coat subdivided?
2. If so, what is the SubDivision Algorithm applied? Usually Catmark by default in DS 4.5+, but try Catmull-Clark. If no subd, disregard.
3. Is smoothing type set to Base Shape Matching or Generic Matching?
4. Did you use a template when you auto-fitted the coat? This would be the 2nd dropdown box that you see when Auto-Fit pops up. There are options such as Pants, Shirt, Full Body, etc. Try Robe-Full Length
I will certainly see what I can do to make this better, but I think it is more inherently an issue with autofit and the coat model itself. Autofit in both Genesis and Genesis 2 has difficulties with long dresses, coats, etc. and seems to have issues at the collars on some things. I have attached a picture of G2M and Genesis, both with the Michael 4 shape so that the differences are minimal. They are wearing the Duster from M4 Cowboy. As you can see, the collars on both look pretty bad (red circles) and at the area where the thighs meet the hips (green lines), the G2M version actually does a better job at capturing the shape than Genesis. I see the area between the legs on your example, where G2M is worse, but on the cowboy duster, this problem is not there. What I'm getting at is the clothing model has a lot to do with how well autofit works. Right now I am experimenting with this duster to see if I can figure out what body group the collar tips and the area you have shown fall under, and how I might better be able to make those polygons follow the correct weight maps.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and I'm sorry you are having problems with the coat. If it weren't $30 in the store, I would consider buying it and working specifically with that coat. Has the autofit and clone been working well for you otherwise?
Thanks for the reply, I know different things work differently when it comes to autofit, I have things that transform beautifully others that just become a crumpled mess, particularly problematic are long coats belts collars belts with swords a real problem, the Jack of Hearts set autofits nicely except for the sword, which is attached to the belt it goes all kinky.
Answers to your questions
1. No the coat is not subdivided
2. NA
3. Base - changing to Generic does help especially with the skirt breaking, sorry I had forgotten to try that.
4 yes I used a template and I used the Robe-Full Length one
Other wise the Autofit has worked well, I've just run through several other coats and most transfer ok even without smoothing even the M4 Amazing coat available at Rendo looks passable, the collar doesn't distort much at all considering how high it is I wasn't really expecting it to work very well.
The Robe from the Warpmaster set here at Daz doesn't do too well at all.
The M4 Pirate coat works nicely as does the Wanted DOA and the Regency Coat.
The Windy Wizard Robe (Rendo) sleeves break up but I kinda expected that.
I think the conforming works well (M4 to G2Male) but when I apply certain poses, the outfit (legs of the skirt/long coat) crashes. Its' probably because the long coat/skirt follows the legs. See my pictures. I tried with several skirt outfit/long clothes and it's excatly the same problem with the same style of breakpoint when Genesis2M walks/runs.
Do you think it is possible to fix that?
Best regards.
Maybe you're right, Slosh. I put my pictures before I read your last post. Maybe it's the autofit/model which can be optimized. The shoes and boots, on the other hand, conform much better with your product M4 to Genesis2Male. Even long boots conform well. So thank you so much for that.
I'm having issues with the UV part of this product. HOWEVER .... it may be a case of program incompatibility/user-being-dumb-enough-to-try-that. I was able to transfer my textures, create a .duf file and load the results onto the Genesis 2 Male. Looked great. I saved it and then made a Poser Companion File so I could use it with the DSON Importer. And that is where things went rather wrong. I opened up Poser 10, caught me a fresh G2M and tried to put my nice new skin on him. But absolutely nothing happened. The textures did not load in Poser. So does this not work at all except in Daz Studio, or did I do a major stupid somewhere in the conversion process?
You might try applying the .duf preset (which should at least change the UV set) and then applying the original Poser mat pose/mc6 - DS materials, especially if they use alternative shaders, don't come over well in companion files - most items will have Poser materials settings added manually to the CR2 or PZ2 that goes with the .duf.
Thanks, will try. Was thinking about it last night & realized I might also have saved the wrong thing, it was the .duf I made of the M4 materials that were on Michael I tried using in Poser. Not the ones that were transferred onto Genesis. :oops:
I'm not a Poser user at all, but was told by DAZ that the only way the M4 UV's can be used in Poser is by using the Set M4 UVs preset that I included with the package. My guess is that you have to apply that first (which is what I think Richard was saying), then apply the .duf material preset that you made in DS. I don't think it is necessary to have applied it to G2M in Studio before saving it. The M4 version you saved should work fine, AFAIK.
In response to the question about the long coats and such, I have to say that I am disappointed in long coats in general, autofit or native to the figure. It seems, even in generation 4 days, that coats are made to follow the legs just as Lyone has stated. I don't know of any way to disassociate the length of the coat from the legs except on a per-item basis, and even then it would be way more work than anyone would want to go through. It would involve deleting bones, adding new bones, setting weight maps, etc. Maybe some guru will come up with a way. Since I am currently working on some autofit improvements for my own M4 product, I will take a bit of time to see if I can't improve on this, but I do know that SickleYield is working on some autofit clones that will help with long dresses/robes/etc. for G2M.
Okay, this time I got the textures to apply in Poser, however as you can see the results are less than spectacular. But in Studio the same .duf files work perfectly. :scratches head: What the heck is going on?
Okay, this is possibly the easy part. The problem is that your UV's did not get changed. I don't know how to do that in Poser, but hopefully you already do, or someone will read this and tell you.
Eureka! I found the missing link! Or rather, the thingy that changes the UVs to M4 in Poser. Cannot believe I missed it. Now my texture works. However, it is the .duf I made from the G2M in Studio that applied this time. For whatever reason, the original M4 version of the .duf does nothing at all, nor do the .mc6 files when I tried Richard's suggestion.
Hi everyone! I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten about working on the fixes, or that I wasn't doing it. I have been messing around with the autofit clone, trying to make it fit even better. At this stage, more clothes fit without poke-through, even without using a smoothing modifier (which I still recommend, it just makes things fit nicer. Except armor. I wouldn't use a smoothing mod on that).
The issues with the long coats and high collars is due to the individual garments. I've noted that, on the coats I own, some have polygons in the collar that are not attached to the neck bones, but rather the chest. Those stray polygons are the ones that are crumpling and unless reassigned to the neck, they will continue to do so. As for the area between the legs, it was mentioned that the "skirt" follows the legs, but the bunching between them comes down to, again, polygons going to the wrong bone. Many coats look great, while others not so much. In extreme poses they are all going to suffer, but I know we still expect to be able to pose any way we want without crazy stretching and crumbling. Some designers were luckier in the groups they created in the original design. Or maybe not luck, but skill, though how they could foresee Genesis and Genesis 2 is a mystery :)
The gloves are being my biggest pain in the neck. I fixed some of the webby polygons that appear between the fingers, but I just recently discovered that the ring finger on each hand is picking up polygons from the middle fingers and pulling them out of shape. If I can get to the root of why this is happening, and fix it, I may be able to sort out the collars and skirts, too.
Basically just wanted to let you all know that I am actively trying to sort this. Also note, I may do some adjustments to the UVs as well. There are areas that could be less distorted that I did not see until tattoos were pointed out to me (you may have read the blog review by jimzombie). I have new software to buy at the beginning of the month that should help me a lot with that. If it works out, I plan for D5, H5, A5, S5 and F5 UV kits, but unfortunately the kits will be UV only... no shapes/morphs. I don't have any rights to those :(
Thank you for keeping us up date.
Is it possible to do anything about draping sleeves?
Just to let everyone know... I have made a new autofit template specifically for Michael 4 Gloves that shows a vast improvement to the fit even without using a smoothing modifier. I would like to point out that the smoothing modifier still gives the best results because it forces the glove to fit the shape of the hand wearing it. The fit still causes some distortion in the original mesh, particularly in the fingertips of the ring and pinky fingers, but this is the best I have been able to come up with.
I also updated the autofit clone itself, reducing the amount of poke-through some have still experienced when not using a smoothing modifier. I was not able to solve the issue with capes and long coats. Unfortunately, because they follow the legs, there will almost always be issues with that when using autofit.
Lastly, I have updated the preset "Set M4 UVs" so that it does not set your shader back to DAZ default. I have submitted the updates to DAZ and hopefully they will be in your account shortly. When the update goes live, I will post here again so that those who do not use DIM can be notified to check your Product Library.