dForce vs VWD
ebergerly
Posts: 3,255
in The Commons
I have a rule against installing new software versions until everyone has worked out the kinks, so I'm clueless about dForce.
So have any VWD users tried dForce, and is it any better? Specifically, does it have important stuff like Scale/Shrink?
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It is part of the new version of Daz Studio. It isn't a stand alone software. It doesn't effect the way Daz Studio works. If you wanna use it you can if you don't you don't have to.
Not sure if it has scale/shrink, but I read that dForce does have the ability to configure fabric type (e.g., silk vs denim), which in turn makes the drape more realistic.
VWD doesn't have this to my knowledge.
+ dForce integration in DAZ makes the workflow way faster than VWD
+ dForce default settings make clothes keep their original shape more than VWD
+ dForce settings for surfaces are more intuitive than VWD (in my opinion...)
+/- dForce can be faster or much slower than VWD, really depends on your hardware
- dForce's unstable simulation detection is lacking
- dForce does not weld adjacent verticies together so straps/pockets/buttons go flying on some garments... you can work around some of this with weight map editing but some of it not as much
- dForce has no interactive dragging of the simulation unlike VWD
- dForce doesn't support hair currently (although some people have had some success)
- dForce won't pop-out clothing that intersects with a character like VWD does
- dForce doesn't have an option for automatic ground plane (you have to manually add one)
- dForce doesn't bake keyframe morphs to the timeline unlike VWD
- dForce self-collision seems less stable than VWD (in my testing so far)
One of the big upsides with Dforce is that characteristics are stored as part of surface material. With VWD I'd often waste a lot of time trying to reset vertex parameters.
In Dforce I don't have to explicitly bring in objects to be involved in the simulation; if they are visible, they're simulated. If not, not.
The only things I really miss in Dforce is good tools for hair simulation (which is presumably going to come at some point), and being able to drag cloth mid-simulation.
+ dForce is free
+ dForce can have pre-designed content for it so it will work without having to tweak
OptiTex dynamic cloth can... oh wait, sorry... wrong thread! ;)
dForce is a physics engine and is only starting off. But just like Iray, it is fully integrated and free with Daz Studio. And it is supported by the Published Artists (vendors) here so we will see more and more dForce enabled outfits in the store every week.
It does have scale and shrink in the cloth settings. For now, you can set it per material zone.
Laurie
Sorry, I'm not quite getting the idea. When I think of scale and shrink I think in terms of clothing that will fit on a large body builder and also a little old lady or a child. That was always the major problem with Optitex for me - I think the workaround was to scale the figure to fit the clothing (designed for a standard V4).
If the clothing is rigged, it will follow the scale of the figure. Also unlike Optitex, prop clothing will keep scaling
In addition, there are ways to scale and shrink within the dynamic settings.
I think I get that. If it is rigged, autofit will take care of the scaling before dForce is called to do the draping? I'm now trying to think of a situation where further scaling and shrinking might be required but I'm sure there are such situations.
Good stuff. Thanks much.
To make it look as if the clothing is too loos or too tight? Though you should be able to manually override the settings on the clothes to achieve that effect, or use a dForm to create a shorten or lengthen morph.
It's not so much that fabric shrinks while you're wearing it as different types of fabric move differently. A medium-weight denim skirt is going to drape differently than a thin, soft, silk, for example.
There are dForce settings in the materials (accessible via the Surfaces->Editor,) to control how the mesh drapes, with names like "buckling" ... I've read that dForce uses a lot of terms used by the Optitex plugin and, perhaps, VWD, but if you aren't familiar with these products, it can still be very confusing. Daz has given us a popup tool with terms that make more sense to the uninitiated. There are six buttons, in pairs, with names like "Shrink" and "Expand," (doing this from memory, so not guaranteeing the accuracy of the those labels!) If you click on the left button, the value between the buttons goes down by 1; and the right button increments that value. When you're done and accept your changes, the program applies your changes to the dForce options of the selected surfaces. The more you understand what those options do, the less you'll use the tool.
Bigger boobs. In order to keep that area of cloth from looking too shrink wrapped, the expand in the cloth settings works great. Conversely, the shrink works great for when the bust is very small so that the cloth in the area doesn't sag too much. Those are the two that come to the top for me, but I'm sure there'll be other situations ;).
Laurie
I used VWD for a render a couple months back, (my first, and so far, only VWD image.) I was able to drape the skirt, stop the sim, add in something else, and then continue the sim. (The skirt would have draped over my lady's dance partner, in the tango, but I also needed it to respond to his other leg, where their hips were close.)
dForce won't do that, at least, not yet.
On the otherhand, dForce seems a lot less complicated to me. There were so many settings with VWD. The more I tried to refine the drape, the worse it got. I finally went back to my first attempt, hid her leg, and continued that sim. But the fabric stretched way beyond what real fabric would. If it weren't for the fact it was supposed to be pooled on the floor, it would have been obvious the skirt was a foot or two longer than anything anyone would try to dance in! And while some of the older stuff falls apart with dForce, I'm not seeing stretch like that.
Ooo... Good point! (I was thinking in types of fabric, but you're talking about how things fit. This speaks to the "one size fits all" nature of conforming clothes. And how fitting the same clothing item to Princess Leila and Bethany 7 can have "challenges.")
Thanks to those above who answered my question about situations requiring the use of scaling and shrinking. I'm looking forward to a more stable implementaion of dForce but, for me and for now, it is just too unreliable.
I don't know why but there seem to be groups of people who get software to work for them and others who find only frustration. I had the same experience with VWD - for me it just kept crashing no matter what I tried. I even had the software developer helping me personally but we couldn't figure out why it crashed so often. When the dForce beta was released (and an update shortly thereafter) I jumped in and tried lots of different garments in poses that were not too taxing (avoiding body parts intersecting, etc.). Honestly, 9 out of 10 attempts ended in either explosions or DAZ Studio crashing. I just can't work with that and I say that as someone who spent upwards of 30 years in computer support of one kind or another.
When they fix the mesh intersection problem and add interactive manipulation of the cloth (like VWD and Marvelous Designer have), I'll be keen to try again. Oh, and also the problem with geografts.
I believe the reason software can work flawlessly on some systems and be a nightmare on others has something to do with the huge variety of hardware, and how it's configured, drivers, and so on. I've been on the frustrated side of things as often as not, it seems, and I can totally understand why you'd want to wait.
dForce has a long way to go, and frankly, I was surprised Daz released it already. Maybe because the dForce compliant clothing was ready to be released? And I'm sure clothing modeled to work with dForce, (all seams welded, buttons and such attached via Rigid Follow Nodes, etc.,) will work fine with dForce as it is today. But my personal opinion, having played with it since the 4.10 beta was released, is dForce is "not yet ready for primetime."
It's an exciting innovation, and once they implement specifics for hair, and for soft body physics on the figures, (and fix the issue with intersecting a collider, like a character's leg,) it is going to be a real game changer. Right now, it's fun, but a real time suck. And when it doesn't work, it's frustrating. Not Daz's fault older content falls apart, or has intersecting bits that cause the item to explode. (Like the lovely ribbons and bows on the V4 Fairy Gown gloves. :-( ) But still frustrating to put a lot of work into something only to have it fail.
Some have mentioned that VWD will allow you to "weld" the mesh by proximity so that pockets, buttons, etc don't fall off while dForce won't and you need to monkey with weight maps to try to emulate that. True that the "proximity weld" import option in VWD allows you to sim virtually anything without it falling apart BUT if you do that some things like modeled in wrinkles might cause parts of the cloth to "weld" together across the wrinkle. It's not an issue with all clothing, but definitely sometimes can impact the quality of the sim (basically the wrinkle can never go away regardless of the simulation and sometimes that looks weird).
One definite negative to VWD is that it creates a replica of the clothing item with the same UVs but different topology. It's triangulated. That apparantly helps the simulation but when you send it back to DAZ it's a prop and cannot be made into a morph for the original cloth item. It seems like dForce doesn't have this issue.
I haven't used dForce yet because I'm waiting to see how plugin compatibility with the new Studio is before I commit. Looks like a nice tool, great for some situations, maybe VWD is better for some others. I'd love to have both tools in the toolbox.
Agree with both previous comments. Not ready for primetime is precisely how I see dForce too. And the question of exporting VWD drapes as morphs was one of the first I asked on their forum at Rendo - I thought the fact that it can't was a huge minus.
I managed to get VWD to work for me precisely once, and you'd think I'd asked it to clean the oven the way it complained about it. On the other hand, dForce is working great here and a lot of older clothes are getting a new lease of life. At least with dForce it costs you nothing to try.
VWD also has wind. I've not fired up studio yet to see if dForce has it or not, but no one's mentioned it.
dForce has wind. I haven't used it successfully yet outside of the sample scene, but it has it.
It does.
Sweet :) I'll have to try it. See if it's any easier for me to pick up on and if it's any faster on my machine than VWD
I'd have to disagree there, dforce works great, ever tried Poser dynamics, its not dforce that's necessarily the problem but that people haven't learnt how to use it efficiently yet, no not all things will work with it successfully you really can't expect that, dynamics needs certain modeling so old stuff is a bit hit and miss.
Some more thoughts on the importance (IMO) of scaling/shrinking, if implemented correctly. Unlike the totally useless Blender shrink wrap feature.
If you make your own clothes, it's nice to go into your modeller, grab a primitive shape that's real simple and may not come close to fitting your character, and bring it into VWD and do a sim that magically fits it to your character. A bit like Marvelous Designer I believe. In VWD, just select the vertices you want to scale, punch in the amount you want it to scale (say, 80% if you want that area to shrink a lot). And what's more important is you have control on how much it shrinks, and what parts of the mesh are selected to shrink. For example, a waistband area can be selected to shrink a lot, but the rest of the clothing has zero or a small amount of shrink. And you can do it interactively as the sim progresses. If it's not shrinking the way you want, stop the sim, change what's selected or the amount of shrink you want, and re-start. Or turn off gravity and re-start if it's not shrinking and draping right.
Also, a good implementation of a shrink/scale doesn't merely bring each vertex of the clothing to within a fixed distance of the underlying base character (which is what Blender does). Instead it just shrinks the entire clothing until it starts colliding with the character, then stops. That allows a much more realistic draping. For example, in the boobage area it will give a cloth stretching between the boobs, instead of the ridiculous problem you usually have with conforming clothing where between the legs and between the boobs you get this valley instead of a nice stretch.