Dynamic Clothing Questions

Geminii23Geminii23 Posts: 1,327
edited April 2013 in The Commons

So I have struggled with figuring out how to get Dynamic Martial Art Gi for M4 to work very well, for quite awhile now, and can not seem to get a handle on this. I gave up trying to make this clothing work on Genesis, so I am just using the base M4 at this point, but still no good results.

Can anyone recommend some good tutorials. My most basic problem, is that when applied I am not able to pose my character without the clothing tearing apart from the figure. Most of the tutorial only seem to relate on animation but I am just trying to do a simple pose at this point.

Thanks.

Post edited by Geminii23 on
«1

Comments

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Geminii23 said:
    So I have struggled with figuring out how to get Dynamic Martial Art Gi for M4 to work very well, for quite awhile now, and can not seem to get a handle on this. I gave up trying to make this clothing work on Genesis, so I am just using the base M4 at this point, but still no good results.

    Can anyone recommend some good tutorials. My most basic problem, is that when applied I am not able to pose my character without the clothing tearing apart from the figure. Most of the tutorial only seem to relate on animation but I am just trying to do a simple pose at this point.

    Thanks.


    Dynamic clothing really needs to be applied AS an animation to get the best effect out of it. It's called Dynamic clothing because it dynamically changes based on the characters movements and is affected by gravity. The caveat is that it won't naturally follow figures like conforming clothing, so you need to create a small animation of your figure moving from the T-pose into their final pose for best effect.

    Once your short animation is set up you can then run an animated drape from the dynamic clothing tab and your previously static clothing will move naturally with the figure.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Oh man I hear you on this. When I first got some Dynamic clothing and found out I needed to do animated posing my colour drained and the sky started falling. :)

    But now I find it so easy it feel so silly believing it was hard...it is not.

    Frame 0 Load figure, texture maps and clothing
    Frame 20 Pose figure and inject Morphs, tweek as needed.
    Frame 30 nothing changes from frame 20.

    why the 10 frames at the end, just in case I need to do a static drape to smooth out more if needed.

    Open Dynamic Clothing Control and set to Animated Drape making sure you are on Frame 0, hit drape. Job done.

    Uisng Genesis is a little more fiddly but doable. I listed the process in another thread, I will go and dig it out if you need it.

  • TjebTjeb Posts: 507
    edited December 1969

    I still don't understand what it has to do with animation.
    I did this in one minute.
    - loaded V4
    - loaded dynamic cloth
    - gave a random Genesis basic male pose
    - no fiddling in the Dynamic Clothing panel, just hit 'Drape'

    DynClothing01.jpg
    1200 x 900 - 130K
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    tjeb some off, not all but many, of the Dynamic Clothing that is in the store need animated drapes to get the best out of them. But yes I have also gotten good results from Static draping but it really does depend on a number of factors like heavy morphed figures beyond what they were made for, extreme posing etc. Also many of the older items in the store haven't been upgraded to automaticaly fit Genesis as they were made for M4/V4. But again even for these older clothing some of them can be statically draped on Genesis.

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    tjeb said:
    I still don't understand what it has to do with animation.
    I did this in one minute.
    - loaded V4
    - loaded dynamic cloth
    - gave a random Genesis basic male pose
    - no fiddling in the Dynamic Clothing panel, just hit 'Drape'

    Two main reasons that works. Firstly, your garment has no sleeves, and so doesn't clip through the arms. If it had been a sleeved garment, the sleeve would start out inside the figure, and the subsequent drape would be colliding as such. Secondly, the clothing is a simple dress and can sit upon the legs at the bottom.

    In an animated drape, you might get some level of stretching at the legs instead of it riding up, and it would look more natural.

  • Geminii23Geminii23 Posts: 1,327
    edited December 1969

    Wow! I got really excited after reading these responses. I was suddenly hopeful.

    I also read this tutorial, which did help quite a bit:

    http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/artzone/pub/tutorials/dazstudio/dynamicclothing_yourfirstdrapeandbeyond.pdf

    I followed the tutorial to the letter. I have experimented several times with trying to drape multiple times and also tried experimented with the scale but I can not solve this poke through issue.

    Can anyone suggest anything?

    Thanks.

    Test.png
    1600 x 900 - 658K
  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    edited April 2013

    It looks like the leg is riding up due to a shifting of the body through space. I don't have that outfit so I am not sure if it is one that does "fit to" or not. If it does then look at what the final pose hip level is and match that in the first pose. Check to make sure that there is no craziness with the pose. I once had awful results because rather than a positive hip turn it was a negative and the figure was twirling in a circle. Lastly if none of the above works stop your animation when the leg starts to ride up and do a static drape so that the clothing shifts back down (in other words before the leg is fully horizontal) and won't ride up.

    edit to add.. You may need a few more frames or a short static drape at the end to even the drape out. Also you can change the surface setting to higher smoothing to cut down on the sharp edges.

    Post edited by Khory on
  • Geminii23Geminii23 Posts: 1,327
    edited December 1969

    Khory said:
    It looks like the leg is riding up due to a shifting of the body through space. I don't have that outfit so I am not sure if it is one that does "fit to" or not. If it does then look at what the final pose hip level is and match that in the first pose. Check to make sure that there is no craziness with the pose. I once had awful results because rather than a positive hip turn it was a negative and the figure was twirling in a circle. Lastly if none of the above works stop your animation when the leg starts to ride up and do a static drape so that the clothing shifts back down (in other words before the leg is fully horizontal) and won't ride up.

    edit to add.. You may need a few more frames or a short static drape at the end to even the drape out. Also you can change the surface setting to higher smoothing to cut down on the sharp edges.

    Actually this is not an animation. I am trying to make a single frame.

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    edited December 1969

    I've never done an animation in my life but I almost always use an animated drape to get the results I want. Letting the cloth move into place through a time line drape generally gives me better results if the pose is anything more than just standing around. And if you make sure that you deselect anything that the clothing does not need to intersect with the time is not really very long.

  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    Animated drapes are the way to go. My problem, however, is that the collision detection in the dynamic clothing control is pants. Even with animated drapes, clothing often falls right through figures because collision detection is having problems. Very frustrating when you have to keep adding "low rez" primitive shapes (I usually use cylinders) to the figure to act as 'drape guards' because the clothing isn't colliding with the figure. And yes, all the appropriate stuff is listed in the 'collide with' options. It seems mesh density plays a large factor in it. Too fine a mesh and the dynamics just don't collide with it.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    cwichura said:
    Animated drapes are the way to go. My problem, however, is that the collision detection in the dynamic clothing control is pants. Even with animated drapes, clothing often falls right through figures because collision detection is having problems. Very frustrating when you have to keep adding "low rez" primitive shapes (I usually use cylinders) to the figure to act as 'drape guards' because the clothing isn't colliding with the figure. And yes, all the appropriate stuff is listed in the 'collide with' options. It seems mesh density plays a large factor in it. Too fine a mesh and the dynamics just don't collide with it.
    Umm... Really? Because it's the other way around for most users. To low a mesh count and the collision can not calculate against it. High count items I've never once had a issue with.
  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    Yes. I spent the better part of a day battling with Studio to get the Trinity Leather Jacket in Coming of the Death Dealer to drape without falling through the V4 figure, or failing to collide with things like parts of the belt, the straps on the bodice, the straps on the boots, etc. In all, there are six cylinder primitives parented to V4 and the various clothing items to act as drape guards.

    If I load V4 and the cloak and do a single drape in T pose, it mostly stays on her. The collar often starts falling into her neck. If I then apply SubD to V4, and repeat the static drape, the cloak will fall right through her.

    For that render, I did an animated drape to try and get the cloak to look like it would with a figure actually walking. (I baked the walk forward (1 cycled) aniblock into the Studio timeline to get the walk animation and had it blend from T pose to start into the walk animation.) The cloak was keeping to V4's arms, but fell through the shoulders and was pillowing out behind V4 like a parachute until I added a cylinder just below the skin horizonal between the shoulders.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    You do understand the power of your PC and the iterations of the collisions all come into play with Dynamics.

    I still say, and stand by it, a LOW mesh count fails when a HIGH mesh count (think quads here) will collide. If you wish to test this make a Primitive Plane 3m by 3m with just 4 divisions and DRAPE against it. Then increase the Divisions to 25 and try again. You stated a general statement before and then used one example to prove it. The Plane example I just gave is testable by anyone.

  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    I have had this problem with all the dynamic clothing I own, not just the Trinity Leather Jacket. I'm currently traveling for work this week, so don't have access to my render machine to test the plane. But my experience has been that denser geometry has more problems with collision detection than lighter geometry does.

    And my PC is fairly powerful: quad-core i7 at 2.2Ghz (not that it matters, since the draping engine seems to be single-threaded anyway -- it only pegs out one core). Doing animated drapes, I usually have the drape engine configured for 10 drape subframes per real frame.

  • Geminii23Geminii23 Posts: 1,327
    edited December 1969

    Well, I have basically spent the better part of two days in frustration trying to get a single dynamic outfit to work right on an M4 figure with no morphs. At this point, I feel that any dynamic clothing I have purchased has been a waste of money.

    ;(

  • murgatroyd314murgatroyd314 Posts: 1,431
    edited December 1969

    cwichura said:
    But my experience has been that denser geometry has more problems with collision detection than lighter geometry does.

    Ideally, the polygons of the clothing and of the figure it's colliding with should be about the same size. Where either one is too much smaller than the other, it can slip through the holes.

    If you're thinking that this, combined with the highly variable polygon sizes in human figures, is a recipe for trouble, you're right.

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    edited December 1969

    I've always had better luck with a larger rather than smaller poly count as well.

    failing to collide with things like parts of the belt, the straps on the bodice, the straps on the boots, etc.

    I have had trouble with clothing catching on edges but I don't think that is due to poly count but rather the sharp corners.

    The only time I've had an issue with fallin through shoulders etc is if the clothing is not about the "skin" to begin with and when using a V4 item on genesis.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Geminii23 said:
    Well, I have basically spent the better part of two days in frustration trying to get a single dynamic outfit to work right on an M4 figure with no morphs. At this point, I feel that any dynamic clothing I have purchased has been a waste of money.

    ;(

    If I had the item I would give it a shot. But I use Dynamic's so little I only have a SMALL collection of content.
  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    I've found dynamic clothing in Daz is notorious for poke through. So much so that I've started using geometry shells on my figures so that the clothing has an extra layer of collision before it meets the skin. Unfortunately, the basic plugin has no options for starting the collisions early, so there are few options to fix it. I'm not sure whether it's any different in the paid plugin, but I can't really justify buying it when there's still no option to create your own clothing so you're still totally reliant on OptiTex's own dynamic clothing range,

    Either way, geometry shells have saved me a lot of trouble in the few instances where I do use dynamic clothes in Daz.

  • SimonWMSimonWM Posts: 924
    edited December 1969

    I've found dynamic clothing in Daz is notorious for poke through. So much so that I've started using geometry shells on my figures so that the clothing has an extra layer of collision before it meets the skin. Unfortunately, the basic plugin has no options for starting the collisions early, so there are few options to fix it. I'm not sure whether it's any different in the paid plugin, but I can't really justify buying it when there's still no option to create your own clothing so you're still totally reliant on OptiTex's own dynamic clothing range,

    Either way, geometry shells have saved me a lot of trouble in the few instances where I do use dynamic clothes in Daz.


    I don't know if the free plugin has the "Preferences" tab. But I've noticed that dynamic clothes loads with "self intersection" checked and "Face-body intersection" unchecked by default. As soon as you invert this setting pokethru is practically gone. There is also a button named "Restore Defaults" that inverts that too. I wonder if the defaults were inverted erroneously in a DAZ Studio update.

  • SimonWMSimonWM Posts: 924
    edited May 2013

    Geminii23 said:
    Well, I have basically spent the better part of two days in frustration trying to get a single dynamic outfit to work right on an M4 figure with no morphs. At this point, I feel that any dynamic clothing I have purchased has been a waste of money.

    ;(


    Could you post a picture of what you are trying to do, maybe I can give you some pointers. Also do you have the paid plugin? There is extra control that you gain using the paid plugin but the free one should let you do static drapes fine on Michael 4 with the Martial Arts gi.

    If you don't have them I suggest you download the free fabric presets from this page http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/FreebieDownload04.php and try them on the Gi and your other dynamic clothes, sometimes you need to go thru these and find the best combination. From the presets I think I used Single knit Jersey for the jacket and Warp Knit for the pants. For the jacket I selected some of the panels and increased weight and friction for the skirt and the belt. I probably need to decrease it in some parts of the belt. This was done pretty quick and I know I can get an even better drape if I keep playing with it, I haven't used the gi in awhile. The more time you spend playing with this the more you discover how to use the many parameters to your advantage. Don't give up on dynamic clothes, its not a point and click solution, it takes time to master but the realism in your renders will pay off in the long run.

    gi.jpg
    1920 x 1161 - 516K
    Post edited by SimonWM on
  • edited December 1969

    Szark said:
    Oh man I hear you on this. When I first got some Dynamic clothing and found out I needed to do animated posing my colour drained and the sky started falling. :)

    But now I find it so easy it feel so silly believing it was hard...it is not.

    Frame 0 Load figure, texture maps and clothing
    Frame 20 Pose figure and inject Morphs, tweek as needed.
    Frame 30 nothing changes from frame 20.

    why the 10 frames at the end, just in case I need to do a static drape to smooth out more if needed.

    Open Dynamic Clothing Control and set to Animated Drape making sure you are on Frame 0, hit drape. Job done.

    Uisng Genesis is a little more fiddly but doable. I listed the process in another thread, I will go and dig it out if you need it.

    I could kiss you, Szark. I've been having real trouble with the Dynamic Evening Gown for DS riding up A4's leg like the hem was terrified of her feet and couldn't wait to get away from them. I then tried this method, albeit up to 40 not 30 and it worked. It rode up the leg as always then came back down perfectly at frame 40. Thank you 10 million times. xxx

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    LOL my pleasure Niknak (love the handle)

  • edited December 1969

    It's not so much a handle. My friend dubbed me Spicy Niknak (in honour of the savoury snack of the same name) back in 2004. It stuck and now even I'm calling myself it, lol. Out of curiosity, have you used the Dynamic Evening Gown? It still refuses to work on DS3 and I only use DS4 if I'm desperate.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    LOL I am not even going to ask how the name came about. ;) As in why Spicy Niknak.

    What this http://www.daz3d.com/century-nightgown one. To be honest I haven't used much Dynamic stuff lately and I haven't used DS3 for near on two years now.

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942
    edited December 1969

    Oh, I used to love spicy nik naks! :)

    Anyway, do you mean this product? Presumably it's on V4 (as you are attempting to use it in DS3). Also I presume it is the 32-bit version of DS3 you are using. Sadly that is one of the few dynamic items I do not have, otherwise I'd give it a try. :(

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited July 2014

    It's really simple, if you want to just do a normal gravity pose. Pop open the animation tab, go to frame 30 and pose your guy in the position you want. Jump back to frame 1 and set him to the default T position with the clothing lined up. Drape as animation over the 30 frames. Once you get to the 30th frame if it's not perfect just change it back to single frame drape on the 30th frame and drape like normal (don't clear first).

    The reason you do this is because dynamics get all wonky at greater than ~15 degree bends from the base pose without this method. You'll still get your single frame pose, just think of the 30 frame "animation" as a tool for draping dynamics. It's really as simple as doing your normal stuff on frame 30 instead of frame 1.

    P.S. If you already have your figure posed on frame 1, just go to frame 30 and press "Add Keyframe." That will give the 30th frame a pose-record that the animation has to "hit" before continuing. After you do that just go to frame 1 and zero the pose. Ezpz.

    Post edited by Testing6790 on
  • edited December 1969

    SimonJM said:
    Oh, I used to love spicy nik naks! :)

    Anyway, do you mean this product? Presumably it's on V4 (as you are attempting to use it in DS3). Also I presume it is the 32-bit version of DS3 you are using. Sadly that is one of the few dynamic items I do not have, otherwise I'd give it a try. :(

    That's the one. It refuses point blank to work in DS3. It is the 32-bit version, yeah. If I could find the 64 bit version I'd try it. What are the odds of that though?

    I can't get on with DS4, it takes ten minutes to do what takes thirty seconds on DS3 and even then it makes a mess of it half the time, lol. I use DS4 only for certain dynamics, but I set up the scene on DS3 first. I recently backdated my DS4 to 4.0 from 4.6 because none of my dynamic cloth would work properly on that one.

    Yup, Spicy Niknak's were awesome. And it's not big secret to how I got the name, my name's Nikki. Just my friend being creative, not me being spicy.

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942
    edited December 1969

    Niknak said:
    SimonJM said:
    Oh, I used to love spicy nik naks! :)

    Anyway, do you mean this product? Presumably it's on V4 (as you are attempting to use it in DS3). Also I presume it is the 32-bit version of DS3 you are using. Sadly that is one of the few dynamic items I do not have, otherwise I'd give it a try. :(

    That's the one. It refuses point blank to work in DS3. It is the 32-bit version, yeah. If I could find the 64 bit version I'd try it. What are the odds of that though?

    I can't get on with DS4, it takes ten minutes to do what takes thirty seconds on DS3 and even then it makes a mess of it half the time, lol. I use DS4 only for certain dynamics, but I set up the scene on DS3 first. I recently backdated my DS4 to 4.0 from 4.6 because none of my dynamic cloth would work properly on that one.

    Yup, Spicy Niknak's were awesome. And it's not big secret to how I got the name, my name's Nikki. Just my friend being creative, not me being spicy.
    It may be down to how recent the item is, and requiring a version of the DCC that is way beyond what the 32-bit variant in DS3A can make use of. When you say it does not work, in what way does it not work? One semi-work round might be to do the drape in DS4, and export the final item as an .obj for import into DS3 - you'd need the exact pose for the underlying V4 figure in both DS4 and DS3, of course.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    ...so how does one make sure the clothing item does not go through the floor. been experimenting with the Dynamic Sheet over an object and it always continues on through the floor plane even when I have the floor selected as one of the collision points.

    Using static draping with the built in dynamic controls for now as not yet up to speed on the animation process and if I need additional plugins to make it work.

Sign In or Register to comment.