Posing and draping in Marvelous Designer

grinch2901

I have been playing around in MD and made a few things I like and they come nicely into DAZ Studio.  However I wanted to figure out how to get a more dynamic look and decided to try a sitting pose, using the dynamic nature of MD to drape the cloth accordingly then import it back into Studio. I don't know how to export and load poses to MD so I went with a morph target.  Cool but then getting the seat to actually work was a challenge. You can import it as an object but it won't collide with the clothing. No good.

So here's the workflow I came up with, wonder if anyone has an easier way to do this?

1. Pose character (with all morphs applied) and pose it in seated position in Studio. Add chair in correct spot. Export character and chair as an OBJ #1 (base resolution)
2. Reset character pose to default T- Pose and move the chair way back in the Z axis.  Export character and chair as an OBJ #2 (also in base resolution)
3. Import OBJ#2 (T-Pose and chair) into MD as an avatar. Note that the chair is actually a part of the avatar so rotation is a pain since the chair is far away making the pivot point somewhere in the middle of nowhere but it is a collision item at least. Fit the clothing to the character as normal.
4. Load OBJ #1 (Seated pose with chair in proper position) as a morph.  As it is applied two things will happen
   1. The character will morph to their final seated position
   2. The chair will move into it's correct position, colliding with the garment (say, a skirt) from behind. It collides because it's actually a part of the avatar, as noted above. To get this to look decent I ramped up the number of steps from the default 30 to 45 or 60 because at 30 that chair is coming in way too fast (or rather there aren't enough calculation steps as it comes in) and the cloth tries to blow up.  More calculations = slower drape but cleaner result with the chair.
5. Export the garment (just the garment) in this seated position as an OBJ, import into studio with the character / chair position as in step 1 and there you go.  It should be a perfect fit for your posed character, no rigging needed (or desired, really).

The render below was a result of this process.  But it's tedious. I'd like to know if there's a better way to get a character to pose in MD and to collide with an object like a chair while the draping is happeneing.  Any better methods?

TheKD

What I do is:

Need third party tool for this, but it's free script. http://www.sharecg.com/v/76477/gallery/8/Script/animMorph

 

Export OBJ of character and collision props(I find having her in APose arms lowered by 40, and legs moved apart wider is easier to model the clothes on though). Props way out of the way as well. I export at DAZ studio scale

 

Then I move the timeline 180 or more frames then set the pose and props up and set keyframe.

 

I might repeat step 2 many times, adding different poses

 

Then when all done posing, I save the scene, and export a MDD animation file.

 

In MD first I just import the OBJ, and build the clothes.

 

Then I import the MDD cache animation file. Also remember to put daz studio scale, and also you have to check invert Z axis, or your figure will do a 180 lol.

 

Then I do all the fun animation draping in MD.

 

Then once that is done, I export the clothes, as OBJ sequence and uncheck unified U/V's(not sure if unchecking that is critical). And back to DAZ studio.

 

I open the scene back up, and import only the first OBJ in the sequence.

 

Then I select the clothes OBJ and open up morph loader pro. Choose morph files, and select the rest of the OBJ files. 

 

Then run the animorph script and done. It's more useful for animation, or if you plan on rendering a bunch of poses. Sometimes I end up liking a "tween frame" better for render than the keyframes, so gives me some more options to choose from.

grinch2901

That seems similar to what I do regarding exporting the character and the prop / chair as a single OBJ avatar so I guess I got that right. It was just a guess, I couldnt find any documentation. Regarding the export of an animation in MDD I don't think you can do that without aniMate, which I don't own because I don't do animations. I don't think I'll spring for $60 just to do this, I'm afraid.  Does seem that your workflow is similar to mine in nature if not specifics, which means it probably wouldnt be a simplification really. A matter of preference I suppose.

The thing about doing it as a morph though is that it starts out perfect and it ends perfect but in between the avatar gets all sorts of screwed up looking. Hands get all wonky and flat and twisted, for example, as they morph into the final position.  So far I havent had it mess up any of the cloth drapes but I am concerned of the possibility.  If that happens maybe I'll need to consider the $60.  I thought perhaps doing poses would be better but I haven't figured out how that works really, and I don't think it would work with the chair anyway.

TheKD

Oh damn, I forgot MDD was not part of the studio pro base, sorry about that :(
Yeah, those odd inbetween bends was the reason I figured out this method. I think you can add more than one OBJ as morphs to smooth it out if you get some really weird bend stuff going on.

grinch2901

Doing several intermediate steps to smooth the oddball morph transitions makes a lot of sense and would be easy to do. Just set up the animation timeline at frame 0 with a T pose and at frame 30 with the target end pose and advance through the animation and pick one or two intermediate frames and export those and in MD go from one to the next to the next until you get to the final pose. I guess if it comes to a need for it, I'll do that.  Thanks for all your feedback, this was really useful!