Digital Art Zone

Well, I’ve started working on a new piece, and have the modeling done for the most part. It still needs collapsing, UV mapping, and Mat zones,but it’s looking good so far. The real “fun” is going to be rigging.  The plan is to rig it to fit Genesis figures, with the extremities “bones’ going out to the collar, but not the arms themselves, and then using handles, and possibly movement morphs, to allow the main body of the the cloak to move independently of the figure, and thus flow more naturally. I have absolutely no clue how to pull that off.

I started with a large 21 point sphere primitive with one level of smoothing (the radius equal to the height of the Genesis figure), cut it in half at the equator (deleting the bottom half) to make a hemisphere, flattened that, and thickened it. After that, I selected the entire outer edge of the thickened disk, cut it away, and did the same for the “bottom disk”. This set of steps was needed to allow the disk to be bent and shaped after flattening. Otherwise, all it did was move vertices along a single axis.

Then, using the Edge tool (extract edge along edge) I Extracted the inner most ring inward to fit more closely to the neck of the Genesis figure, selected the inner most wedges inside this new ring, and cut them away creating the neck hole. With Symmetry on along the X axis, selecting radial lines or faces (it varied)up to the (now—second-most inner ring), I rotated them down, repeating radially around the whole cloak, starting from the spine and working forward, and adjusting as needed. Then I select about two wedges on either side of center of the front, and cut them away, 

Once this was done, I collapsed the geometry and added a new level of smoothing. I then copied the cloak selected the outer three or four rings, and cut them away, creating a smaller capelet, selected two wedges more on either side of center of the capelet, and deleted them to widen the front opening further. I selected part of the front edge of the main cloak, and folded it over diagonally (selecting two to three more points along the top edge out towards the extremities) to create the lapel. After adjusting the necklines of both the cloak and capelet, I created a 70 point cylinder with only two edges (top and bottom), set symmetry to the X axis, widened the bottom edge, and narrowed the top edge. I then bridged the cloak’s neckline to the top edge of the collar, one segment at a time, creating a folded collar, and cut away the remaining unbridged faces from the cylinder, opening the collar in front. After making adjustments to both the capelet and cloak to fix poke through and sizing to fit a clothed figure wearing a jacket, I thickened both the capelet and cloak each with .02 thickness to create the inner lining. I think about the only thing I might need to model yet, is a chain and clasps to secure the front of the cloak at the neckline.

ooo that looks way cool!

It’s a pity we don’t have a cloth settup plugin for DS… are you going to rig it with lots of bones or just use it in Poser?

IF you decide to rig it in DS, I would highly recommend you leave it as LOW poly as possible.  You’re going to need quite a few bones for this.

What I would suggest is this: rig it with bones every other column of polys going down and the polys between them have them weighted at 50% for the poly column on each side, and 100% for the poly column their associated with.

Let DS do the subdivision.  That’s what I did for the Belle gown.  DS seems to like it that way.

I don’t work in Poser, so it’s DS 4.0 all the way. As for rigging, I haven’t a clue. The only rigging I’ve done is with the Transfer Utility.

I never go too high on poly count when making outfits anyway; usually two levels of smoothing tops, and even then, I do them one level at a time, collapsing in between. For this, I’ve applied one level and then collapsed it once already. It was an absolute must for folding over the lapels. In Daz, I typically apply a Smoothing modifier of 1 on my outfits.

I truly find this idea fascinating, and I think there’s a way to do this so you can get realistic draping with a boned cape.

I did a quick and dirty test to see what it looks like after running it through the transfer util and this is what I have…

I’m thinking that if you do that, and then run bones off the shoulder bone that will give you your drapes… but that depends a whole lot on what the geometries look like.

adding: I just had a thought… what if, instead of modelling it to fit the figure in your modeller, you simply modelled almost flat?  What i mean is this, comform those polygons to the shoulders and arms, getting them close as possible: then after you run it through the transfer util, you rig it so you can drape it say with three to four bones per column every other column?  This way, with x scaling and offsetting, you can get the drapes and make it move like a real cape would?

wancow - 05 March 2013 10:38 AM

I truly find this idea fascinating, and I think there’s a way to do this so you can get realistic draping with a boned cape.

I did a quick and dirty test to see what it looks like after running it through the transfer util and this is what I have…

I’m thinking that if you do that, and then run bones off the shoulder bone that will give you your drapes… but that depends a whole lot on what the geometries look like.

I’m planning on running the bones off of the left and right collar bones, rather than the shoulders. This way, I get the most freedom of movement from the cloak. I’m not sure what happens with the hip, abdomen, second abdomen, and chest bones though.

adding: I just had a thought… what if, instead of modelling it to fit the figure in your modeller, you simply modelled almost flat?  What i mean is this, comform those polygons to the shoulders and arms, getting them close as possible: then after you run it through the transfer util, you rig it so you can drape it say with three to four bones per column every other column?  This way, with x scaling and offsetting, you can get the drapes and make it move like a real cape would?

You mean keep it mostly a flat disk? It’s a little too late now. As for rigging every other column, that might be a bit much still. Before collapsing the geometry, I started with a disk with forty columns, and only removed four of them to open the front. even doing every other column, that would be twenty sets of bones; with three to four bones each, that’s between sixty to eighty bones. That might be a bit much.

yah, I tried the flat disc approach and could not make it work…. I’ll keep playing with it and see what I come up with.

wancow - 05 March 2013 04:51 PM

yah, I tried the flat disc approach and could not make it work…. I’ll keep playing with it and see what I come up with.

Yeah. I didn’t think it would. Starting with a flat disk is one thing. Keeping it a flat disk through rigging is another. That would be fine for dynamic cloth, but not a rigged “conforming” cloak.

TG, any new progress on your project?  Still wondering how you’re rig is going to look…

Working on the UV maps and Mat zones. And just call me Tramp.

Well, I finally have it UV mapped and mat zones added.

uhg… UVS unwrapping, how gloriously tedious

Nice work on the map!

wancow - 12 March 2013 11:54 AM

uhg… UVS unwrapping, how gloriously tedious

Nice work on the map!

You have no idea just how tedious. I was up all night UV mapping this thing. Now I’ve got to export an object file and rig this thing…

Somehow.

Oh no, I do understand!  That’s why I try to assign my UVS in the beginning… I’ve had hard lessons on UVS!  I’m surprised actually, that you did it that quickly!

Here’s a pic of it fully textured: (actually R72 velvet shader and WoS satin shaders). I’ve run the Transfer Utility to set up the basic rig, but I have no idea how to do the advanced rigging, adding bones, etc I need to do. As it stands a lot of shapes distort the mesh, to varying degrees, and posing mangles it. (though I don’t get the only one arm rigging issue others have had). When setting up the mat zones I decided for a simpler trim than my original character’s design. Overall, I like it. I just need to rig it.

adding bones is simple.  Delete the bones you do not want.

Select the bone you’re going to parent from, right click and add bone.  You need to figure out the rotation order, preferably in advance.  The middle of the XYZ rotation order should be the twist.  I believe the last one should be the one most likely to rotate 90 degrees, but I’m not sure.

you can assign weight mapping to your bones by painting on the polygons, and you can copy that map to the rest of the rotations.

if you want it to be selectable in the scene, you have to define a face group for the bone to be applied to, or it’ll only be selectable in the scene tab.

btw, Materials look fantastic

wancow - 12 March 2013 06:20 PM

adding bones is simple.  Delete the bones you do not want.

Select the bone you’re going to parent from, right click and add bone.  You need to figure out the rotation order, preferably in advance.  The middle of the XYZ rotation order should be the twist.  I believe the last one should be the one most likely to rotate 90 degrees, but I’m not sure.

you can assign weight mapping to your bones by painting on the polygons, and you can copy that map to the rest of the rotations.

if you want it to be selectable in the scene, you have to define a face group for the bone to be applied to, or it’ll only be selectable in the scene tab.

btw, Materials look fantastic

Thanks. Pretty much all of the new bones have to radiate out from the collars and/or chest bones. As for the rest ?????

I could really use a step-by-step.