Are these solutions available?

tokidoim_920299746a

OK, so because the simple prop in the first attachment worked well for me, I'm trying using the props in the 2nd attachment.

They are both custom second skins with various primitives positioned strategically to straddle the gaps in space on the chest, since it's difficult to get standard clothing morphs to NOT hug the mesh of such drastically morphed "fit-to" figures. The first one was very easy to do and worked with juat about any pose without a hitch because the area straddled doesn't shift with posing.  The second one is more troublesome because posing the collar nodes makes the mesh (and therefore the 2nd Skin texture ) to shift.

The black colors of the 2nd skin ONLY cover the areas that are supposed to hug the skin surface.  The gaps are briged by primitive cubes, (stretched and posed to approximate strings, obviously).  I used D-Forms at each end of the cubes to more precisely position them onto the skin to meet the edges of the black colors of the 2nd Skin.

Now whenever I move the collars, I need to reposition the D-Forms due to the shifting of the mesh.  My end product is a series of images used to tell a story, so numerous renders with a variety of poses will be required.  I see 2 solutions to the time-consuming process of posing 4 D-Forms for any collar movement:

1: Reduce the size of the area affected by Collar movements, which would be fine for what I have planned for the specific story, I wouldn't mind if the character's collarbone might look a little arced upon close inspection; I'm not planning on the scene requiring any severe collar motion.

2:  Execute a method by which my cubes are affected by Collar movements.  I see all these intriguing tools in DS4.9 that I am utterly clueless about.

Are either of these solutions available without spending weeks having to learn everything about figure rigging?  Not that I'm averse to learning, but the end products have a higher priority than the multitude of fundamental skills which go into creating all the pieces and parts.  Hacking a CR2 file in Notepad is not beneath me, but I won't pretend to know what everything in it does. XD.

Any assistance would be appreciated :)

BeeMKay

Have you tried Fit Control? http://www.daz3d.com/fit-control-for-genesis-and-genesis-2-female-s

I'm not 100% sure if it works for your setup, but it's a fantastic tool to get rid of the shrink-wrap look. They're available for G1 to G3 from the same vendor(s).

tokidoim_920299746a

Thanks, that might be useful, but I'm kinda committed to what I've started here.  I locked the collars and still have a decent range of motion using just the shoulder nodes, and I'm hard-headed enough to move my D-Forms every time she needs to shrug, but I'm only talking about 4 items with 8 vertices each here.  It shouldn't be too horribly complicated or time-consuming to get them fitted to the mesh rather than parented to the node.

BeeMKay

Actually, now that you mention it, there's an option to create an anchor point at any given vertice. You could parent the DFormer to that.

I just don't recall off hand how it is done, but I used it for Animated Ocean.

BeeMKay

They are called Ridgid Follow Nodes, check the post below mine in this thread for details: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1613226/#Comment_1613226

tokidoim_920299746a

YES

That is exactly the chunk of knowledge I was hoping to get XD

Now that I understand what the tool is selecting, the other right-click options are making sense to me, too!  I can definitely use this for other things that I have been working around, like creating more usable UV maps for custom textures on objects that were not created with simple customization in mind, like this nice-looking coffee cup model.  I had to fidget and fidget with the texture to get the logo on it.  Now I should be able to easily customize things like this in the future.

Attachment 1 shows the cup I had to make do with, it has repetitive surface areas and the logo showed up 4 times, Attachment 2 shows a quick edit I did by selecting the faces where I originally wanted to stick a logo and slapping on a texture.  Now I have tons of options to remake it just the way I want.  I'll need to make some new textures now, but I'm pretty handy with that ;)

Thanks so much!