Clothing Conversions
marble
Posts: 7,500
I have a huge V4 wardrobe, a moderate Genesis collection and a quite large G2F content library. Now I'm starting to include some G3F characters - I've bought the morphs and a couple of sets (Bethany and Growing Up) and I'm starting to dress them up. I hoped to use my existing wardrobes with the help of converters such as Wear Them All and SY Ultra Templates. However, I'm having problems with poses.
If I convert a G2F dress it usually fits nicely in T-Pose but when I try to have the figure sit, I just can't get the dress to match the thighs. If I use the bend handles (I think these are created by the SY Ultra product) the dress stretches and distorts horribly and does not conform to the legs at all.
I did convert quite a few items a few weeks ago and ended up feeling pleased with myself and the conversion products but now, when it comes to using them in scenes, I find I may have been over-optimistic and I now have another expensive round of garment purchases ahead.
Just an example: The Cute3D W-Skirt. Lots of morphs, many of which transfer across but comparing the movement with the dress loaded on G2F and the conversion loaded on G3F, I can see why Cute3D took the time to create a G3F version. The G2F conversion just doesn't work.
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Maybe try fitting the dress to a V4 figure, copying the pose, hiding the figure, and have the dress collide with the G2F figure, with a little scaling to get it closer? I'm assuming the dress follows the V4 figure more properly.
Sorry - maybe I wasn't clear. I'm trying to use clothing conversions on G3F - not V4. Wear Them All does the conversion from other figures to G3F but the problem comes with posing once the conversion has been done. The fit is usually fine but the distortions come when posed.
I know, just offering another possibility. Good luck. ;)
Appreciated. I just thought you were thinking I needed to convert a dress to V4 when it is G3F I need the clothes for.
Conversions with things like skirts, long dresses, trenchcoats, things of this nature are ALWAYS really fiddly, and sometimes they just flat out don't work no matter what we do.
I can suggest Sickles projection templates... I think it's UltraTemplates or somesuch for the Genesis 3's. She does a great job with her templates, and they do put in additional bones for skirts to allow you to have a little more movement control over such things. But, conversion of these sorts of items are always a problem, and sometimes they simply will not convert well enough to be seen in a render.
Another option might be to check and see if Evil Innocence has done any license for the Genesis 3's... but I think Crossdresser requires a Poser .cr2 format to work from...
Wish I could be more help than that - sorry. It really is just a lot of fiddling and tweaking... sub-d, collision settings, smoothing, setting body parts invisible, all kinds of workarounds to make things like skirts/dresses/long coats convert... there's no shortcut.
LOL - you might notice that I mention I'm using Sickleyield's Ultra Templates in my OP :)
I had CrossDresser when I had a Windows PC but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work on a Mac.
I'm not really looking for a shortcut - just wondering if it is at all possible. I'm pretty sure that the posing problems are due to the different rigging of G3F compared to previous figures so even the commercial projection templates are not really producing the results I had hoped for. I'm well used to collision and smoothing settings and other tricks but at a loss when the geometry distorts wildly and unpredictably.
I have some Ideas that might help.
By far the easiest is to reduce the scale of the bone that you moved. This can help with the distortion.
If you want to get a bit more indepth you can open the rigging tab and select the skirt.then right click and under edit there is an option to adjust rigging to shape You will have to deslect everything but the handles and choose the correct face groups. I haven't done this much so my advice on the correct things to do is limited.
You could also fiddle with the weight maps if all else fails.
There is also a way to use the transfer utility to retain the old handles (if there were any). That mostly works on skirts and hair though. I haven't had any success with dress but I might have to try it again soon as I have learned a couple of new tricks.
Some interesting ideas there - I hope I can follow some of the steps. I have no experience with rigging or weight maps so its another learning curve. So far I've just bought new clothes but I'm aware of how much money goes out just replicating a wardrobe for each new generation.
Well, I have made some progress thanks to some suggestions here. Chief among them is using the scale slider when using the skirt handles (under the dress Pelvis heirarchy).
I eventually found the Rigging menu - I got to it by:
Scene Tab (select dress) >
Scene Options Menu (little icon to the right of the search window which looks like an arrow over a stack of lines) >
Edit > Rigging > Adjust Rigging to Shape
I'm not yet sure what, if anything, it has changed, however.
if it has skirt morphs do not fit bottom just to use shirt
Sorry - I'm not quite understanding that. Do you mean during the conversion?
Also, that raises a question about auto-follow. I notice that the original - say G2F - skirt follows the thigh when bent but the conversion does not. It just continues to point straight down and I need to use the handles to pose it. Is this a "feature" of conversion or am I missing a step?
yes depends entirely on the clothing item
if it has handle bones follow this tutorial
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Keeping-Bones-On-TU-Conversion-Fast-Way-449218737
if it has not and uses morphs usually created in Poser with dynamics you fit as a shirt and use those morphs
Sorry - I'm even more lost now. I don't use Poser or Poser dynamics. I'm talking about clothes bought here at DAZ for G2F and converted for G3F using two products - Wear Them All and SickleYields Ultra Templates. The handles - as far as I can tell - are created by the SY Ultra Templates during the conversion. The handles do not exist on the original dress.
This is what I mean about the lack of auto-follow. The screen shot has G2F with the Original Jumper Dress and G3F with the converted Jumper dress (converted using Wear Them All and the SY Ultra Templates). Bending the thigh shows that the original follows G2F but the G3F conversion does not.
I was only talking about how the clothes were made in regards to Poser dynmics, I do not have that dress sadly to test it using the keeping bones tutorial I linked.
yes The SY autofit adds new bones, the tute I linked by her uses original ones
but it may have joint controlled morphs too.
OH - I see what you mean - the PA might use Poser Dynamics to drape the dress and create a morph from that. Ok - that makes sense.
Hopefully we will have something similar with the Virtual World Dynamics product being developed. It looks much more user-friendly than the Optitex plugin that I really dislike.
Using SY Ultra produces a dress with leg bones names changed for independent moving dress (I am supposing this works like her previous products for rigging because I am not own the product), so dress didn't conform to legs anymore. Instead of, you are free to move your low par of the dress as you want do it.
Something to help me using Morphing fantasy dress (which have handles instead leg) is set joint editor in tool setting tab to see the bones while I move them and understand how the skirt if changed. Of course, I next use wrinkler to improve the fall or add wind, produce an obj, and then a morph for the dress. If I had dollars, I would try the converter to dynamic clothe instead using wrinkler, to obtain the morph.
You mention two items that I was not aware of: Wrinkler and a Dynamic Converter. I found Wrinkle 3D here in the store but it is Windows only (I have a Mac) and also it would be another expense. I don't know the Dynamic converter you mention but I do think the Virtual World Dynamics converter looks like it might be a good investment. Unlike Optitex, it looks like you can move the cloth around with your mouse once it has draped. Again though, that is still in development and only - at the moment - for Windows :(
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOpGh2GKgryXyMlbcTQ45dg
Yes, we need wait for this.
I forgot the no-mac problem. Maybe SY ultra bones would be better than MFD bones, remember that SY is the master of bones. Seeying bones highlighted for join editor can improve your use of bending in parameter tabs enough to don't need the dynamic step.
I sent you a PM
This method won't actually work on G3. Transfer Utility does not enable the fast method when switching from TriAx to General weight mapping and back (that's between multi-axis and single-axis rigging).
When I submitted a ticket the Support folks did give me a workaround for converting G2 to G3 and vice versa, which I have used successfully, but it's complicated enough I figure most people won't want to do it:
"
# Ensure that when the G2 clothing is loaded that you do not Auto-Fit the clothing.
# Convert your G2 clothing from TriAx weight maps to dual quaternion general weight maps.
## Select the G2 clothing item in the *Scene* tab
## Select the *Node Weight Brush Tool*
## Remove any existing general weight map: In the viewport, activate the context menu and select *Weight Editing / Clear Weight / Clear General Weight*
## Convert TriAx weights to general weight maps: In the viewport, activate the context menu and select *Weight Editing / Weight Conversion / Convert TriAx Weight to General Weight*
## Open the *Tool Settings* pane:
### Change the *General Weight Mode* from *Linear* to *Dual Quaternion*.
### Lock any bones specific to the clothing so their weights are not affected by transfer utility. In the case of the _Arthurian Dress_, these are the bones _LeftUpperHandle_, _LeftLowerHandle_, _RightUpperHandle_ and _RightLowerHandle_:
#### Select the *Locking* tab in the lower portion of the pane.
#### Click the lock icon next to each of the bones _LeftUpperHandle_, _LeftLowerHandle_, _RightUpperHandle_ and _RightLowerHandle_ so that it displays as locked.
# Invoke the *Transfer Utility* via *Edit / Object / Transfer Utility...*
## Select _Genesis 3 Female_ as the *Source Scene Item*
## Select _Arthurian Dress_ as the *Target Scene Item*
## Select _Clone: CloneGenesis2Female_ as the *Source Item Shape*
## Click on *Weight Maps*
## Select the *Extended Options*: *Respect Hidden Facets on Target* and *Merge Hierarchies*. Most of the time you will want to select *Respect Hidden Facets on Target* when *Merge Hierarches* is selected.
## Select *Reverse Source Shape From Target*
## Click *Accept* to invoke the *Transfer Utility*
# To view the weight maps on the handle bones, you will need to unlock them in the *Tool Settings* pane with the *Node Weight Brush Tool* selected.
You should now have clothing where the additional handle bones are preserved with proper weights and it should work with G3 Female."
Wow - that's really complicated for a hobbyist. Once again, if time is money then it would be cheaper to buy new clothes instead of attempting to convert.
So is that procedure for all clothes converted from G2 to G3? And, if so, are we saying that the conversion tools I mentioned in my OP (including your Ultra templates) are not going to give good results when it comes to posing?
Someone should write a script for that LOL
Huge thanks to SickleYield for posting the suggested solution, I hope that helps to those concerned.
Point is not that products aren't gonna give good results when posing, point is that on some item pieces results may vary. Both clones and templates are created as helpers for people to make older items useful again, which doesn't mean all items will work perfectly, but most of them however will work well with these two products. This has been known with all previous generations of clones as well (created for Genesis and Genesis 2), where yes, clothes made for a particular figure (Genesis 3 for Genesis 3) are definetely to work best with it, which doesn't necessarily make it cheaper, especially if you have older items in your content folder you invested earlier and can reuse them instead of tossing them away.
Cheers, V.
I don't know about the current version, as I've barely touched CD since the release of Genesis, but four years ago it worked just fine through Wine.
So, when's the conversion tool that helps do this for us coming out???
Thanks to you and SY for adding to the discussion. The more I play, the more I'm finding that - as you say - some can be made to pose ok while others are more of a problem. I often wonder whether it would be a hard task for a PA to adapt their previous generation products and offer them at a discount to the owners of those previous products. There are some G2F and V4 items that are really nice but have no G3F equivalents.
By the way - is the Auto-Follow that allows the skirt to bend with the leg not transferable during the conversion?
Autofollow should be automatic, unless you're adding extra bones. Depends how you convert an item - using a special template that adds extras or using a simple one that just clones Genesis 3 bones into a garment. That's where choosing the right template (shirt, dress, pants) from the dropdown (or just using - none) plays the part.
Thanks for the extra mini tute SY
I must confess to not really using G3M & F so did not know
I do use your keeping bones a lot between Genesis and Genesis 2
I also have your rigging and morphing products too but use them more for adding bones to external clothing, my modeling attempts and draped Poser dynamics.
yeah PA's put a lot of work into stuff so 90% of the time better to buy a version made for your figure of choice, I use the tools on stuff I cannot buy as it does not exist.
OK - I convert with your Wear Them All and SY's Ultra Projections (which does add extra bones, I think). From the drop-down, I find the dress choices a bit confusing. For example - "short and wide" - is that a skirt or a dress? What counts as short? Knee length or just below the buttocks? And what counts as wide? A normal A-line skirt or something that flares out at the hips or anything that is not skin-tight?
I warmly suggest opening "Read Me" folders on both products, lots of information there, Sickle even has the mp4 included and both have tutorials how to be used.