WIP Navy Uniform
Slosh
Posts: 2,391
I don't even know if I'm allowed to post in this forum... not a PA yet. If not, I apologize. I am working on a U.S. Navy uniform for Genesis and have gotten to a point where I think I am almost done. I would like a few people to test it, render it, bend it to its limits and tell me where I might improve upon the uniform. Maybe suggest some morphs or options that are not already there. I have made the basic dress uniforms in white and black, with t-shirt, socks, shoes and a dixie-cup hat. I am thinking about adding a peacoat, but not entirely sure yet. Please respond via PM if you are interested in testing.
If I have gone about this the wrong way, I hope someone will advise me of the proper channels and submission guidelines.
Thanks!
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Some info here on becoming a published artist.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/publishing/start
It's looking very nice from the picture :)
Gedd, I received your initial reply in my email Inbox, but was confused when I got to the thread and couldn't find the comments. Then I realized you edited it. I guess you figured out the neckerchief and the strips (piping). ;-)
anikad, thanks for the link. It is very very helpful. I wonder if I should still be asking for volunteers? I know I can't submit the product until it is "Daz ready", so maybe I still need a few testers? I would really appreciate some advice from some active PA's about testing and maybe get an idea on how long it takes from submission to actually getting the product on the store. Should I have people test only parts of the product, rather than send my entire product to any one person? Is it reasonable to ask for an exchange with other vendors, ie. I send you my product for testing and you send me one of your products when finished, since you will essentially have a copy of my product for free? I used to do this with vendors at Renderosity when I developed products for them.
I've seen Sickleyield say that she 'swaps products' it might be worth contacting her, she always seems willing to help.
I think I saw BishounenTaurus say something similar.
I've traded products at Rendo, but usually that's finished items only. If you ask people to test for you you will get subjective results - I can tell you if it has basic working functionality and what I think will make it more salable, but that doesn't guarantee Daz will want it. They don't take everything I offer them even now. ;)
I'll going to tell you the first thing they would say about the outfit from the pics, though. More wrinkles. That's literally the thing they say to me with 90% of the things they reject or ask to have edited. You need to take it right back into your modeler and sculpt in folds and creases on the shirt and pants. Then either rerig it or use that as a basis for displacement maps (this latter option is nice because it lets you have a lower poly base mesh). To get it looking its very best you can also generate an ambient occlusion layer and use that to gently shade the texture (assuming it is a UV'd texture and not a shader) by putting it on top at 40% or so in Soft Light mode (that's GIMP, I don't know what the Photoshop equivalent is).
When you do this, don't look at one picture of the outfit hanging just so with one single pants crease. Look at a series of pictures of it in motion, take the aggregate of all the folds and wrinkles from the different pictures, and add enough of them to look like it's moving properly from most angles. It's possible to overdo it and just get a lumpy mesh, but at the very least you should have these creases:
-Seam creases (inner and outer leg, underarm, sides of shirt, coinciding with the UV seam if you mapped it in a way that makes that possible)
-Crotch and bum area (radiating)
-Inner thighs (longer, inclining from outside to inside)
-Underarms (radiating from the side seam area)
-Inner elbow and back of knee (short, thicker)
Yes, some DAZ vendors may seem to be getting away with not doing this, but even the cheapest, simplest outfits have to have some kind of gesture or attempt at realistic fabric detail even if it's just a couple of elbow wrinkles - if you're looking for it you can find it.
Do this. But do not bake it into the mesh [except possibly ironed-in creases]. Make a series of dialable morphs so it's actually versatile. I hardly ever buy clothing that has stress wrinkles all the time in the same places regardless of how the character's actually moving. For clothing like a uniform or a professional suit which people try to keep wrinkles out of this is even more out of the question. Built in wrinkles are as unrealistic if not more so than no wrinkles at all, and they're a lot harder to deal with. It's much easier to add this sort of thing than to remove it.
You're making a base mesh. Treat it as one. There's a good reason Michael, Victoria, Aiko, Hiro, the Girl, etcetera, start out as idealized and youthful. Not because they're meant to remain that way in all cases, but because that's the most useful starting point to build off of.
Add aging morphs. Add movement morphs. Don't build them in. Would you buy a model of a woman 60 years old with her glutes pre-flattened and breasts hanging in a random direction [because GRAVITY]?
Of course not.
Just my two cents. Take it or leave it.
I realized on thinking about it that the uniform varied a lot over time and country.
Do this. But do not bake it into the mesh [except possibly ironed-in creases]. Make a series of dialable morphs so it's actually versatile. I hardly ever buy clothing that has stress wrinkles all the time in the same places regardless of how the character's actually moving. For clothing like a uniform or a professional suit which people try to keep wrinkles out of this is even more out of the question. Built in wrinkles are as unrealistic if not more so than no wrinkles at all, and they're a lot harder to deal with. It's much easier to add this sort of thing than to remove it.
You're making a base mesh. Treat it as one. There's a good reason Michael, Victoria, Aiko, Hiro, the Girl, etcetera, start out as idealized and youthful. Not because they're meant to remain that way in all cases, but because that's the most useful starting point to build off of.
Add aging morphs. Add movement morphs. Don't build them in. Would you buy a model of a woman 60 years old with her glutes pre-flattened and breasts hanging in a random direction [because GRAVITY]?
Of course not.
Just my two cents. Take it or leave it.
I respectfully disagree with that advice. Before you can sell to customers, you have to get the item into the store. You will not get it into the store without at least some base wrinkles. Morphing is not a good solution because smoothing and collision, even in their newer versions, will wipe wrinkles right out of a mesh if they're offered just as a morph. I regret this, because it's something I used to do myself back in Gen 4, but it's just not a very viable solution now.
Fantastic advice from SickleYield and Agent... maybe I should bake the wrinkles in to make Daz happy, but include a smooth wrinkles morph? That is entirely do-able. The fabric is polyester and was really designed to keep wrinkles to a minimum, but of course there are going to be natural folds and creases. I might have to pick your brain, Sickle, on that AO map thingy. Don't quite understand what your Gimp instructions were. It has been really difficult to get it to look like polyester, especially the black one. Too much specularity and it looks ridiculous, not enough and you see no details. I will definitely work on the creases and wrinkles, and work on the fabric shading. I'm glad you reminded me about the seams... I had them modeled in at one point, but reworking it I lost them and forgot to put them back.
What's your modeler/texturer combo, do you mind my asking? Most 3d suites can do an AO bake.
Mostly ZBrush, but I do have Hexagon and I have access to Maya 2009 at work. Edit: I also use UVMapper
You're good. Zbrush can do all of the things when it comes to sculpting and baking. :D My google search for "bake ambient occlusion to uv in zbrush" seems to indicate it does that just fine as well.
I'll try it out. I am assuming you recommend rendering out this AO map, then blending it over my original texture map in Photoshop with Softlight and opacity around 40%, then saving this as my new diffuse map?
Yes. Maybe stronger on the black one, lighter on the white one (you'll be able to tell). If you're doing the wrinkles as displacement or base mesh you don't probably want to add them to the bump map (it is best for other kinds of detail).
Ok, this I have to ask.. when/where was this style ever polyester if it's official Navy? Afaik, it was always wool and/or cotton. It was the more modern style of uniforms that went to polyester. Maybe they changed later? As an aside, I actually had this uniform.
They are a polyester blend known as Navy Twill. The pea oat was definitely wool. I'll have to do some research to be sure.
Official documentation and, a much longer detailed reference for any specifics.
I want to apologize btw. The difference between these two materials would only show up under conditions and detail levels beyond current product developments, so my input on that level of detail is academic and mute.
I'll answer this one for you since Sickle is doing so well on offering other advice. Yes, you need testers. Daz expects each PA will have done product testing before it gets to them. I would say you want at least two people that you trust not to re-distribute your files and to check over every detail very carefully. I don't see any value in only giving a part of the product out. You need to verify that the whole thing works together and all parts function as a whole. Sure you can offer or ask for a product exchange with other vendors after the product is finished and ready to go. The product you give to your testers is not considered "free" because they are doing work for you in testing the item to make sure it functions properly. The product is their payment for their time.
The Navy suit is looking good so far. Best of luck with it.
Everyone is being so helpful, and I thank you for that. Gedd, good info you have provided in the links. It's been 20 years since I left the Navy, so I have forgotten much, and much has changed. I've read that there is now a camouflage set of working uniforms, instead of the dungarees I wore. Maybe those will be add-on packages later. Who knows? Depends on the success of this uniform. I made this same thing for Michael 3 about 8 years ago and it sold very well at Renderosity, so we'll see.
DestinysGarden, thanks for your input here as well. I thought about the partial thing after I made that post and realized it would not have been a good idea, and you are right about not expecting something in return for beta-testers. How rude, what was I thinking?
At any rate, it seems I am much further from finished than I thought. The thing is, I have started from scratch about 5 times, just trying to improve each time, and there are still problems I don't know how to resolve, like making the muscles less obvious through the clothing when shaping is applied. I would prefer not to add a smoothing morph for each Genesis shape, since people want to put the clothes on and forget about it, but I might have to do so. Plus, I don't own V4, M4, Stephanie 4, or Freak 5 or Hiro 5 morphs. i have V5, M5, SP5, Aiko 5, and the YT5. Already I've had to add a morph to the hat so it fits the basic child without crumbling and to the shoes so Michael 5's feet don't crumble the shoes. It's weird, but I've noticed that, other than the child's hat, any basic Genesis shapes don't mess up the uniform (ie skinny, emancipated, heavy, female, male, etc) but all of the Gen 5 characters cause crumbling. I have applied a smoothing modifier, but still kind of messy. Maybe it's the scaling they all seem to have on them?
I have to wait until this weekend to continue. The day job has my time filled right now.
Well, there you've hit upon the typical dilemma, yes. Your options are basically
a. Do a custom FBM for one or two main morphs, such as M5 and V5. Show those in the promos. Lots of people will buy it, some will complain.
b. Do custom morphs for all of the FBMs available to you. Impossible to actually promote all the features, but a smaller group of buyers will be very happy.
c. Do no custom morphs. End up with abs imprinted on what's supposed to be a loose shirt every time an FBM with muscle is dialed in.
I regularly choose option b., but then I've also got the SRMS to make that a lot faster with most morphs now. Alternately, if you choose option a., customers can in many cases add those morphs themselves, and your filesize is much smaller. Please for the love of Pete don't choose option C. Seriously, I'm begging you.
What is this SRMS you speak of? Sounds mighty interesting, hmm. I can't see releasing it without some custom morphs, at the very least breast span morphs. Come on, what clothing fits like that? Not even Spandex. I also noticed that, when applying to Stephanie 5, the uniform gets a very bad "camel-toe", if you will pardon the expression. Can't have that, no way. I just need to spend the time it takes to make this as perfect as possible. Good to start a reputation off the right way, I think. I have every intention of buying Hiro 5 and Freak 5, which I think will make my collection complete . Then, I need the Evolution morphs, which are also on my list for upcoming purchase. I only started using Daz Studio heavily about 3 months ago, so I have much to learn.
http://www.daz3d.com/sickle-rigging-and-morphing-system
Most people have been buying it for the conversion features, but I MADE it for rigging and morphing new stuff.
I read this, said 'Ah, there's the explanation,' and put it aside, but I confess it's been gnawing at my mind for a while now. How is it that morphs get more distorted by smoothing than the base geometry does? If that's so, it points to something being pretty crazy wrong with smoothing on some level.
I've seen items in the store being offered with the caveat that smoothing shouldn't even be used if you want optimal results; how big of a deal is it? I can see the argument being made that everything should be designed to take advantage of it, but if it forces reliance on texture mapping instead of geometry in some cases, that's a problem in itself.
Wrinkles as displacement mapping seem like they'd be almost ideal because they're not limited by the mesh, but they're not as user-friendly because they can't be previewed and DS has no way to easily stack displacement textures right now, nor any way to control them from the item rather than the surface.
I read this, said 'Ah, there's the explanation,' and put it aside, but I confess it's been gnawing at my mind for a while now. How is it that morphs get more distorted by smoothing than the base geometry does? If that's so, it points to something being pretty crazy wrong with smoothing on some level.
I've seen items in the store being offered with the caveat that smoothing shouldn't even be used if you want optimal results; how big of a deal is it? I can see the argument being made that everything should be designed to take advantage of it, but if it forces reliance on texture mapping instead of geometry in some cases, that's a problem in itself.
Wrinkles as displacement mapping seem like they'd be almost ideal because they're not limited by the mesh, but they're not as user-friendly because they can't be previewed and DS has no way to easily stack displacement textures right now, nor any way to control them from the item rather than the surface.
It is an extremely big deal. Smoothing and collision go together, and without them you will get pokethrough like you wouldn't believe (unless you remember what it's like to get V4 clothes to fit a more extreme V4 morph). Lack of these makes fitting morphs that weren't supported custom more difficult and bending regain some of the annoyance from Gen 4 (not all, weight mapping does help). I will release products with individual features that suggest turning off smoothing, but only in a heavily layered outfit where I think the unsmoothed item will be 80% under something else.
Smoothing is based on the base geometry, which is why it tends to perceive wrinkles as undesirable artifacts and level them out. I don't know how that works on a programming level, just that it often does. It's better in 4.5 but it's still an effect that occurs.
My first couple of Genesis products were not fully smoothing-friendly, but that was because there's nothing in the documentation describing the geometry limitations, which I had to learn by experiment. At that point I had no way to know that the violently spiky artifacts on bending were being caused by my making the geometry clip with the body in areas that were out of sight (because that was a standard method before these features existed). Some early DAZ Genesis clothing is underdetailed on the surfaces in response to this, though newer items are not, as we've all learned what we can do in the meantime (and the features have VASTLY improved in the way they function between 4 and 4.5).
Working from the surface tab is just something to get used to if you're really into rendering in DS. I've never bought a skin even from the DAZ store that I didn't want to tweak at least a little (less often with clothes, but it happens).
It is an extremely big deal. Smoothing and collision go together, and without them you will get pokethrough like you wouldn't believe (unless you remember what it's like to get V4 clothes to fit a more extreme V4 morph). Lack of these makes fitting morphs that weren't supported custom more difficult and bending regain some of the annoyance from Gen 4 (not all, weight mapping does help). I will release products with individual features that suggest turning off smoothing, but only in a heavily layered outfit where I think the unsmoothed item will be 80% under something else.
Smoothing is based on the base geometry, which is why it tends to perceive wrinkles as undesirable artifacts and level them out. I don't know how that works on a programming level, just that it often does. It's better in 4.5 but it's still an effect that occurs.
My first couple of Genesis products were not fully smoothing-friendly, but that was because there's nothing in the documentation describing the geometry limitations, which I had to learn by experiment. At that point I had no way to know that the violently spiky artifacts on bending were being caused by my making the geometry clip with the body in areas that were out of sight (because that was a standard method before these features existed). Some early DAZ Genesis clothing is underdetailed on the surfaces in response to this, though newer items are not, as we've all learned what we can do in the meantime (and the features have VASTLY improved in the way they function between 4 and 4.5).
Working from the surface tab is just something to get used to if you're really into rendering in DS. I've never bought a skin even from the DAZ store that I didn't want to tweak at least a little (less often with clothes, but it happens).
I work in the surface tab all the time. My favorite thing ever [close second is lighting because they go hand in hand]. I don't think there's a single materials preset out there I won't fiddle with. :lol:
It's just not ideal for being able to blend multiple geometry-affecting parameters like displaced wrinkles. I can go into Shader Mixer and do it, but a product that relied on it would have an interesting setup to say the least. It would be incredibly cool to have clothing that had dials for displacement settings [and real-time preview of such, lmfao], or even a way for the program to read displacement files as morphs applied to the smoothed geometry, unfortunately there are way too many hurdles to overcome at the programming level to be able to do that.
I still don't understand why morphs would be affected more by smoothing than the base mesh. If they aren't I don't really see a reason to build wrinkles into the base mesh preferentially to having wrinkle morphs. If they are, then something's a bit funny about how DS is handling it.
Also, have to mention it's almost refreshing to see someone acknowledge this, after several blatant assertions from a few PAs that there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with mesh clipping through the character.
I like what you're doing, but the uniform is innaccurate in a few ways. The top of a Navy Dress blues and dress whites is not that short. When it's fitted properly, you shouldn't see all but the very bottom of the thirteen button trousers. It's also not that tight. The sleeves are not loose like they should be. The thing you have to remember about a Navy uniform and how you wear it is that it's designed for you to be able to take it off when you're in the water. The way you have the uniform draped on that figure is unrealistic. Both uniforms --the service dress blue uniform and the dress white uniform have recessed pockets breast pockets on both sides of the shirt. (The ribbons go over the left breast pocket, and the chevrons go on the left sleeve.
The dress white uniform does not have 13 buttons on it. They are plain polyester white trousers. A good way to think of how far down the shirt should come is about midway down over the front trouser pockets for the correct fit. The neckerchief is also off in that you've got it way to wrinkly. The neckerchief is a black silk. Before it's rolled, you wet the fabric and iron it flat so that there are NO wrinkles in it when you roll it. A proper neckerchief is rolled like a tube and you have to take every precaution to make sure that it stays that way after you tie the square knot. A squared away sailor would not wear a neckerchief that wrinkled. It's also larger than what you have depicted.
The final thing that you have to address is the size of the dogbowl. A sailor's cover is a worn properly sits just above the brow and not at the top of the head like that. It's too small for the figure. I've included some pictures of the dress white uniform so you can see what I'm talking about. I love the fact that you're doing a uniform, so I want you to have good information on how they should look.
One other thing. The Navy Uniform top has a crease running down the center of the front and back of the top. It's tough to see in the picture, but they do.
Well, my top didn't have creases front and back (except when new perhaps but I wasn't required to maintain a crease there) and hardly anyone wore them specifically because they were so hard to get on and off under any conditions much less in water*. I liked them, but fighting to get them on or off was too much work usually. Things very well might have changed since I was in so I'm not saying you are wrong, just that there is at least an alternative version to what you specified. The Navy Blue version of the Cracker Jack was wool when I was in, and the whites cotton. The non Cracker Jack ones were polyester or poly-wool blend (there were both.) Not sure what it is now. I was Color Guard btw... so although I may misremember some things, at one time I had to be pretty on top of exact specs. Because I knew I couldn't rely on my memory, I looked some of this up, and had posted some links. The standard has changed a couple times, so there is that. If one really did research they could probably get exact specs per time period including required maintenance. The one thing research wouldn't show is how hardly anyone wore the Cracker Jack even though many liked the look because they were such a pain. Tops too tight to slip on and off, bottoms too many buttons to mess with when one was in a rush to ... well you get the picture.
All of the rest you mentioned looks spot on from what I remember.
[Edit] * On a related note to this, when I was on ship, if someone went overboard getting clothes off was not an option. They called the minutes till death by hypothermia every morning. No one was taking anything off if they went in the water, rather you hoped you had some flotation device or you were dead before someone could get to you anyways. Almost forgot, from what I understood, this was why the tops were tight (at one time anyways) since they lost their thermal characteristics in cold water if they were too loose.