Hard Graft for Casual Craze
Szark
Posts: 10,634
in The Commons
Been a while since I posted anything but what brought me out from under my rock is that I would like to know if anyone bought this tex set https://www.daz3d.com/hard-graft-for-casual-craze and if so what do you think, any good?
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Comments
Didn#t buy. The texture looks good, but the outfit itself looks so unrealistic despite being dForce ... reminds me of very old V3/M3 clothing. Half painted on the figure or shrink-wrapped, half plastic tube.
I bought casual craze when it first came out and it didn’t look good for some reason.. I haven’t used it since.
doesn't it drape very well?
I'd love to see it draped in something other than a standing pose. And are the suspenders seperate? Can they be draped so that one or both, fall off the shoulder?
Yep thats what I felt as well, unfortunately this seems to be the case with most PC male clothing.
It looks too clingy so I never bought it. The new texture set did tempt me to reconsider though but I still didn't.
Ditto. But I bought it because I needed some 20's era male wear for variety. Problem is: Mediocre tubewear makes Daz figures look like SIMS even when they're disguised by DOF.
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I find it hilarious how I asked a q about textures and got more moaning about the product itself. Thx anyways
I think people were just trying to be helpful.
I know but it still made me chuckle
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I have been reluctant to purchase any PC+ dForce clothing, considering the issues so many of us have reported, (myself included,) with pre-dForce PC+ clothing not working as expected. However, with the 60% off Casual Craze when purchased with one of this week's PC+ new releases, I was willing to take a chance. The outfit and textures together cost $5.69… (And I'm always looking for clothing for my guys.)
It's still disappointing. Though I suppose I should have had lower expectations. However, considering the fact Daz is charging more for a PC+ dForce outfits than for comparable PC+ outfits without dForce, it seems like they should be trying harder to meet my expectations. (And yours, as well.)
Actually, only the shirt has the "Dynamic Surface" modifier. The pants have the "Static Surface" modifier applied. If you put just the pants into the scene and attempt to run a simulation, you'll get the "No objects to simulate" error message! You're not seeing a difference, @HorusRa, because the pants aren't being simulated.
In the Scene tab, if you expand the shirt, you will see the dForce Modifier Weight Node, (renamed dForce Shirt.) Select the node and then activate the Weight Brush Tool and you will see the weight map overlaid on the shirt in the viewport.
Now, as the pants are set to Static, I find it more than curious that they also have a dForce Modifier Weight Node, (renamed dForce Pants.) If you select that weight node with the Weight Brush Tool active, there is no change in the viewport. And if you go to the Tool Settings, you will find there iaren't any weight maps available. Select the pants, apply the Dynamic Surface modifier, reselect the weight node and go to Tool Settings. Now you can select any or all of the eight available weight maps. All of which will load at 100%.
After applying the dForce modifier, I ran Simulate with just the pants in the scene. This showed me that the waistband is welded to the body of the pants, but the belt loops are not: they go flying. The Rigid Follow Node applied button intersects the cloth and so helps to keep the fabric form going into free-fall. When I tried to Simulate the pants, (granted, I made no changes to the default settings or the weight map,) an error occurred before the simulation could complete.
It is possible to simulate the pants but it will take some extra work on your part. The belt loops must be set to 0 Dynamic Strength, or 0% influence via the weight map. Also using the weight map, you'll need to set the front pockets to 0% influence. (This will make sense when you look at the mesh, if not immediately, then when you try to siimulate the pants without setting this area to 0%. Also, I recommend setting the resolution to Base while selecting polys. It's easier to see what you're actually working with.) The waistband needs to have some movement, but 20% influence on the map seems to work, with the influence smoothed in the main pants. I found the default settings to be too soft for the legs, and ended up using a reduced weight on the legs. I'll post a viewport draw of the weight maps later today, after I've gotten some sleep.
Getting back to my disappointment: I can use my experience and get these pants working reasonably well with dForce. But shouldn't that work have already been done before the product was released? Isn't that the point of buying a dForce product, that it works "out of the box"?
LOL… Well, yeah, the texture set is nice. (But now that I've put in the work, I'm not going to scrap my answer!)
and so you shouldn't scrap it.
Man I need a new GC to play with deforce and learn it, it's so frustrating waiting all these years for something like this I can't frigging use it. Oh well.
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@HorusRa, We can only speculate. However, my guess is, the original intent was the pants would also simulate. Why else have a weight node map for the pants? However, I think the mesh is troublesome for the current state of dForce. Set the Draw Mode to Wire Shaded. Then take a very close look at the belt loops. They have edges modeled in, with even smaller polys than the face. With even the tiniest bit of weight, those edges do weird things. Take a close look at the front pockets. Those extra polys also go wonky.
I think the artist did a great job modeling in seams and "thickness" for the pants, but dForce isn't playing nice with those details. I'm going to love it when dForce provides us with a weight map for polys that should retain their shape relative to the rest of the mesh, while still being able to move naturally with the rest of the mesh. (Is that what the other 7 maps are for…? Rabbit hole!) Right now, if you paint out the weight on the influence map, the mesh doesn't move. At all.
I've just fired up the beast, and I'll take some screenshot to post here.
Well telling about the product, good & bad, that the texture set is to be used on is sort of a prerequisit.. Like Physics 101 before Physics 102. After all the texture product's textures are plainly visible but the flexibility and qualities of the original modeled product are not so readily apparent without the trouble of testing the original product which the respondants did and informed you of.
Thank you for this analysis. It is very helpful. Please submit a help request to tell Daz about these problems!
I've purchased another product advertised as dForce, where only one item in the outfit has any simulation settings, and even then, almost nothing moves at the default settings as loaded. The product pages should be clear about which items in the product have dForce dynamic settings and which don't.
Okay, viewport screenshots… (For clarity in these images, Mesh Resolution has been set to Base.)
First up, the Belt loop, viewed from the back. I used the Geometry Editor to select (highlight) the edge polys.
Next, the mesh for the pants, closeup, showing the front pockets, also highlighted. This mesh is what gives the "pocket" it's "edge" and thickness.
And here are what those two areas do during a sim. I've set Dynamic Strength to 0.10, (10%) for all the material zones of the pants, no weight maps.
And not as problematic, but interesting, here is the crotch and inseam after the same sim.
There's lots more, which I will add sometime today or early tomorrow am.
(I may disappear for several hours… Hubby is awake and today is our 18th anniversary! He's been talking about going to see Peppermint…)
Congratulations on your anniversary!
Thank you. (Peppermint was really good, btw. We're happy to see Jennifer Garner in leading roles again.)
Another issue with the pants is the "thickness" at the bottom of the pant legs. Three rows of polys which curve in and up. (These images are from this scene.)
During a sim, those polys relax creating an odd bottom edge. This image is from the foot on the floor.
And this image is from the foot in the air.
At a distance, this issue isn't too obvious. And as much as the pant legs drape with the current weight map, I may try decreasing weight on the lower legs a bit more. (From working on a pair of suspenders with the Lumberjack Outfit, I know that making the weight on the three rows of polys less than the weight on the polys above will most likely not give a pleasing result.)
I get that problem on a lot of seams before DS Beta 4.11+ broke dForce on my PC. The seams should be thicker & stiffer but behave as the same stiffness and heavier than the rest of the garment.
In the garment's defense, that sim was on pants that were the only object in the scene with default everything except for the Dynamic Strength, which was 0.10 (out of 1.00.) The intent was to show how the belt loops and front pockets misbehave with even the slightest bit of draping. In the posed scene, the inseams look fairly smooth without losing the indent, as you can see in the last picture of my most recent previous post.
so the lesson here is you get what you pay for. I do hope the more expensive defoce products are of a better quality.
As a side note, I’ve seen other products on the store where one part is “dForce” and others aren’t, but where the PA is clear about what is and what isn’t. The way the base Casual Craze set is written up, I would have assumed all the parts were dForce as well
I'm actually impressed with how the details are modeled in. I don't think the problem is the quality of the pants so much as with the limitations of dForce. I've been able to solve every issue except the hem using weight maps. And if your camera isn't close to the hem, even that isn't all that noticable.
Let's not forget that dForce is still a new technology. In the current Beta, we're using version 1.1.0.68. The latest version in the Private Build is 1.1.0.82, (which could easily be updated further by the time that build becomes a Beta release). Contrast that with the current release version, DS 4.10, with dForce version 1.0.0.25.
dForce is amazing and a really cool free feature of Daz Studio, but it is still in it's infancy. I'm confident there will come a time when dForce has code to specifically deal with modeled in "thickness," a way for polys to maintain their shape relative to the changing polys they are connected to .I do hope that ability arrives sooner rather than later!
@L'Adair I don't suppose you had any luck dforcing the suspenders? I'm curious if they can be made to fall off the shoulders.
I didn't even try.
I spent days working on the Lumberjack Outfit, with at least half that time on the suspenders. There are details that use metal ring and buckles in the middle of the straps. Using weight maps, you can keep the strap from separating from the metal bits, but those same weights also keep the strap and bits from draping at all.
I think you'd have much better luck using dForms and creating a morph to move the strap after posing the figure. Just be sure and change the Influence, in the Parameters, to Weight Map. Remove all weight from the map, select the area you want to move with the Geometry Editor tool, and then apply your weights. This will give you fairly good control over the movement.