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The Wind options are surprisingly not terrible memory hogs by comparison to other features!
I prefer to use fixed vertices - it's for items that need to retain their shape or when you don't want the material to move. For example, with a long sleeved shirt, you can keep the cuffs in the right position on the wrist, as well as, the buttons will stay round and in the right spot. Also, the waist and hems on mens/womens briefs and swimsuits, can be kept in place with no embarrassing gaps.
Good to see this thread have legs again...
You all should be utilizing both Nailed vertices, and Fixed vertices. It is just a matter of knowing when to use them, or incorporating them into certain workflows. Try using fixed vertices with an on/off workflow throughout static simulation draping. Examples would be lock all hair but one strand, and dynamically pull, or use Wind on it. Or, once you have a certain piece of cloth sim-ed to your liking, freeze it with Fixed vertices, and then continue working on sim-ing other parts of the cloth mesh.
havsm is correct that Fixed vertices are not for animated simulations. Fixed vertices freeze vertices to current world positions, and it you animate the collision\cloth that moves outside of range you will end up with some interesting results (albeit undesirable ones).
Wow, that is really good advice, DaremoK3! There are so many hidden easter eggs of functionality in VWD...each able to create such cool effects.
Fixing portions of hair temporarily or progressively as you apply wind or other manipulations. It makes sense now.
Thanks!
Regarding Sickleyield's post on Selection By Material and Rigidify; 1. You can select any material zones associated with your cloth/hair meshes, but if you want even more control, you can create new material zones inside of Studio with the Polygon Selection Tool and assign new materials. 2. The Rigidify button is two-fold in her example. First, the Use Vertices Extension (shown) is used for cloth stiffening using vertice structures up to a certain threshold which falls short of static/unbendable down to a low threshold with high elasticity (high vertex stretching).
For her example image, the default Count 3/Softness 0.1 yields average vertex stretching. If you wanted a very stiff fabric you would up the Count from 5 to 10 cycle iterations, and lower the Softness as low as it can go (I believe 0.001). I usually keep Count at 5 for stiff material to balance time-steps, because I don't have as powerful machine as SY, and don't want to wait the extra time per calculations. I keep all normal cloth at the default Count 3 which works fine for most cloth meshes. For very springy cloth you will want to turn up the Softness as high as it will go, and adjust the Count to your likes/needs.
The second part of the Rigidify settings is the Use Neighborhood Vertices which is for "gluing" non-welded cloth mesh, or completely separate meshes (buttons, balls, etc.) within a sphere of influence tolerance. There is a limit though of how far a mesh can be removed from one another where the gluing works. For most cloth meshes where cooincident (duplicate) vertices defining two different mesh shells that are indeed cooincident (sitting in exact coordinate space), or near cooincident, you should not have any issues. But, some meshes are built that do not have any vertices located within the highest tolerance and can not be glued/welded (properly/entirely). Example would be a conforming cloth skirt I have where even though it appears the waistband is sitting on top of the skirt the vertex distances between each mesh shells is far greater than the Rigidify max, and yields a noticeable separation as a draped cloth. Though, the skirt does glue somewhat to the waistband, and not fall off and onto the floor, it appears as there is an invisible set of threads holding them together. Kind of looks silly in a final render...
This second Rigidify (Use Neighborhood Vertices) is a secondary By Neighborhood rigidity function. The first is in the main Parameter Settings when you first import your cloth into VWD's Scene where you have three options (Use By Extension, By Neighborhood, or neither) along with initial stiffening settings, and ability to Tessellate your meshes. There are many examples of why not to use By Neighborhood upon import (which locks the gluing in), and using it selectively with the secondary function above inside of your VWD Scene. I'll give one; Static simulating hair as a cloth object. If you import it with By Neighborhood all hair vertices within the tolerance will be glued together, and will all move in giant clumps (sometimes what you might want). However, if you import as By Extension (vertex to vertex between edges per mesh shell) all hair mesh planes will move independantly of one another. Then you use the secondary Rigidify by Neighborhood only on parts of hair mesh needed (top of scalp, strands you wish clumped together, etc.). This will yield better results in most cases, and allow you individual strand work with Wind or Dynamic Deformatin (push/pull) tools.
*Edited for missing letters. Those pesky letters flew off the page to who knows where just as cloth sometimes does in VWD...
My proofreading is lacking.
I love seeing Sickleyield involved with VWD. She is the E. F. Hutton of the DAZ3D forums. The more she participates, the more I believe interest in VWD will grow.
Thank you Sickleyield, and Hi!
Fixme12:
No, there isn't anyone working on a MD plugin for DAZ Studio. I am still waiting for mine that was promised to me for purchasing MD2 when it was first released as part of the "hey, buy this now, and included is our upcoming MD Plugin for DAZ Studio that we are currently working on". Which I did with that promotion, but with SDK changes, and whatever other reasons they could come up with not to deliver, still no plugin given to those who purchased during the promotion. Here we are several years later, and up to MD version 6. Sadly, no plugin in sight...
Hi DaremoK3, most of what you just posted went over my head. And I read it a few times. What would help is pictures where an effect is demonstrated along with the settings utilized to achieve it. I'll try to translate what you said into layperson/newbie speak to help myself understand it and perhaps others. I'm sure I'll get things wrong.
Increase/decrease Elasticity/Stretching - Sometimes cloth feels to stretchy during a sim. To fix this, select the verticies. In Rigidify Use Verticies Extension area: increase the count, reduce the softness, and press Rigidify (see first attachment). [Honestly, I haven't fully grasped the meaning of 'iterations' and 'springs'. Those are technical terms. No idea why there are 2 values to fill out to achieve rigidity in this workflow (count and softness). Ideally would like a slider that simply lets me increase or decrease rigidity for selected area. But with your explanation, I know now how to make stuff more rigid than before.] Since your example for 'use verticies neighborhood' is kind of a counter example, I'll probably avoid it altogether. Waist bands are normally nailed or fixed anyway, thus eliminating the need for rigidifcation.
Tessellate - You used a lot of big words. :) This was perhaps the biggest. No idea what it means. Don't see a button or paramter for it.
"Static simulating hair as a cloth object" - wait what? why? Lol. When I'm importing hair I'll click the Hair button because it says Hair on the button. I'm not sure why I'd ever click the cloth button when importing hair...
Best approach for hair (less clumpy) - Even though I didn't understand much of what you wrote, here is what I'll take home. Do NOT use 'use verticies neighborhood' in Dynamic Parameters when importing hair (even though it's the default). Odd, since it's the default. Sure there may be times when it's useful, but not generally for long or straight hair. In the picture I posted on the previous page of super skyler, I think I used 'verticies neighborhood' when importing and it does look clumpy. So, use verticies extension instead to reduce clumpy look. So when importing hair (I assume I should use the Hair button and not the Cloth button, lol) - check Use Verticies extension (uncheck Use Verticies neiborhood) and keep the defaults (see attachment). Apply params and generate. Then after glue hair to the head phase, select specific areas (mostly top of head) verticies and do a 'use verticies neighborhood' rigidify on those.
That's my layperson understanding of what you said, lol. I realize VWD is advertised as an advanced too. I'm sure if I were a ZBrush user or understood more about meshes, etc, it would all make more sense and technical parameters like 'extension count' would be more of a 'oh cool' instead of a 'what the heck is this' thought.
Thanks again for all of the tips! Even though much of it was too technical for me, I think you saved me time experimenting. NOTE - if you really did mean there are some situations where you should press the CLoth button for Hair, please let me know...I think that was a typo but maybe I'm misunderstanding.
Thanks!
DaremoK3 - thanks for the detailed explanation. Another example for using By Extension rather than By Neighbourhood is if you have an outfit with multple layers, lets say a vest and a jacket. If you use By Neighbourhood, the jacket will "stick" to the vest and will not move as freely as it probably should, while By Extension (assuming that each clothing item is a separate mesh) will produce more natural movement in each item. (Actually, I would be tempted to separate them into different objects and sim them separately). You can always use the Rigidify option after importing to "attach" (still with virtual "springs") if you need to prevent slippage in certain areas.
SickleYield:
I agree that it is far from perfect, but it has made great strides from whence it began. I believe it has potential to become a very good tool in ones toolbox.
Regarding the memory issues, yes, there definitely seems to be something in the coding that is capping higher density meshes, but it might be more related to spring counts and the parrallel multi-threading on CPU In conjunction with the virtual (RAM) threading on high density mesh with outrageous spring creation. Initially, this is what he coded the Use Springs Reduction for, but it seems it hasn't helped much from what I read in the forums. I see notable differences, but I don't believe I am using max thresholds.
The program works utilizing CPU cores for the time-steps in parrallel with doubled virtual cores. This is how on your machine (your video) it shows multi-threading of 24 cores which leads me to believe you have a 12 core machine. On my 4 core machine (14 G RAM) I have 8 cores available for multi-threading. This is also why the more cores your PC has, the better functionality you will have in VWD. My single core 2 G RAM laptop is four-fold slower with any calcualtions working in VWD. Even MD2 only works with one of my cores, so even though there are some current issues, VWD is one step above in this regard. Does your latest version of MD utilize multi-threading yet? I have been out of the MD loop, so I am not sure if they were ever able to get it working.
I don't work with Genesis 3, nor do I have any of those clothes for testing, but I have worked with high tessellation and spring counts. Though, these might just be at a medium level in comparison to what you are trying to simulate. So, could you please give examples of vertex counts in those meshes, and also both observed spring counts and memory usage within VWD. I would like to do some high density mesh testing with comparable spring counts (most likely maxing out my RAM) for failure rates as beta feedback to author.
Also, have you tried simulating with multi-threading turned off, or changing available cores to a lesser amount (half even)? I am curious if this would yield different results.
Currently, the retooling of the code to try and alleviate this has lead to low-poly multi-threading errors. I can not simulate anything low-poly (as opposed to single quad plane in current public release) without turning off multi-threading. I am still trying to find the sweet spot for density errors.
It's well worth the cash, and I use items from Daz I'd never used since buying as too much effort needed.
Not only that, I've bought stuff I wouldn't have since buying VWD.
You can also use Fix, and Clear Fix shown in the above image; if it's a pose series you're working on it wont work, but for a single pose, it's a fast and efficient way of stopping parts moving; I use it in my video tutorials (sorry about the umming and ahhing I do if you decide to watch em).
I don't have VWD but maybe it's simply a 32-bit application? That would make it limited to less than 4GB of ram no matter how much is in your system.
I'm still working on reading through earlier pages, so I want to respond to several different posts...
havsm:
First, I love that image of SuperGirl(?) and Superboy(?) Yeah, I can see the hair clumping, but that is how the by neighborhood algorithm works. No, It wasn't a typo for simulating your hair as cloth. Even though there are two separate simulators, one for cloth and one for hair, I like to simulate all my hair as cloth. I find it quicker to set up, and just prefer the workflow. If you watch SickleYield's VWD tutorial you will see her use cloth simulation on hair as well.
You still will want to use the By Neighborhood for simulating Conforming Clothing if you find pieces fall off of one another. That is what that setting is for, to "glue" them together.
I will post some examples later with images once I fetch them from my workbox. I am on internet with Puppy Linux loaded only into memory with no access to anything...
Wow, that's great advice! I'm going to have to try it. And now that I think about it, Cloth is a much simpler workflow. I suppose I always thought there was something intrinsicly unique about the Hair button that would make hair work better.
I'm going to have to watch SY's tutorial...I must've missed that one somehow!
SY, I'm watching your YouTube tutorial. You got a memory error on Wildling Hair. I tried and got the same error. But I tried again and it worked. Here is what I did specifically:
Worked like a charm! My hunch is that 'use vert neighborhood' when importing the hair (as cloth) causes it...but try all the steps I mentioned above and see if it works for you.
Well I have Poser but haven't really sat down and played with it. I want to learn Carrara first and am making a wee bit of headway (I need 48 hours in the day or to win the lottery so I don't have to work for a living) but as with anything its taking some time. I will be watching for a sale but the decimator is totally out of my price range at the moment. Maybe with birthday money this summer lol.
If you wander over to the VWD forum at the "other store" you will find a statement by the creator that he intends to add a built-in decimator in a future release. I'll try to find the exact quote but I'm not sure what is allowed to be posted here. I believe he said that back in September so maybe the future is closer than we think?
It looks, at the moment, as though VWD is the only viable alternative to Optitex (which I loathe and detest) but, like you, I just can't afford it. There was talk of another plugin being developed - by Kendall, I think - but all quiet on that front as far as I am aware. There was also a really exciting looking video posted here by Jimhug but I think that turned out to be a development for the Unity game engine, not a plugin for DAZ Studio.
Rodrak has a good point. I thought I had a 64 bit version, but I was mistaken. Seems about right why people are having issues with high poly meshes.
Something I am working on still trying to get right in VWD without a lot of extraneous extra work.
I got VWD for Christmas and have been sorely disappointed in it. I don't want to go into particulars, but Sickleyield covered some of the issue. I just find it too limited for what I want to do. Way too limited. I want to drape more than one item at a time, and I want them to collide with more then one object at a time just like something would really do. The VWD creator has made it clear he lmited options on purpose. So I'm out my Christmas money, and the only thing I've found the plugin useful for in my corner (when it's not crashing) is for converting objects so I can convert them again to Optitex.
I am increasingly saddened with the Optitex situation. The more I work with it, the more I realize it was a very powerful plugin that - aside from the hair problem - did a lot of very good things. Especially with animation. I wish they would have added constraints and rigidity, because if they had perhaps hair would have been a possibility too and DAZ folks wouldn't be going from promise to promise hoping for a solution the way I've been seeing over the past two years.
Right now I just wish Optitex cloth would drape *under* something. I found this thread because I was looking for an answer. I've got a cloth hair object that drapes, but it wants to go OVER the hat it goes with. And I want it to drape UNDER the hat. But even with that problem, I think the Optitex engine is better than VWD. The only thing VWD has for it is that you can drape almost anything - unless of course the mesh is too big. Or you want to drape more than one thing at a time. Or it decides the obj is missing. Or it loses the UV. Or it crashes.... LOL
Cloth can collide with more than one object at a time in VWD, you can set up any number of collision objects.
Use a dformer (or multiple dformers) on the hair to push it under the hat first. It should stay down under the hat then when you drape with the figure as the collision item.
spearcarrier:
Try this for a solution to simulate the hair underneath the hat (and start with a small Static Simualtion first to see if it meets your needs)...
1. Set up your scene how you want to send to VWD for hair simulation where you will be using both your figure (Genesis, 2, 3, V4, M4, etc.) and your hat as separate collision objects (as PhilW states above, yes, it can be done). Also, use kaotkbliss tip above to have all hair under hat if wished/needed (or another avenue to do the same - Hexagon, Blender, Zbrush, etc.).
2. Here is one of the important parts that should stop the hair from growing to the outside of the hat, and using the outside of hat as collision model;
a) Select the hat.
b) Go to the Tools Settings Tab and select the Geometry/Polygon Group Editor Tool inside of DAZ Studio.
c) Select all polygons in the hat (with right-click menu, tools tab, view-port selections, etc.), and then open up the right-click menu in your view-port and navigate to Geometry Editing. Last, press "Flip Normals of Selected Polygon(s)" (or something to that affect).
3. The second important part is the more difficult of the two; You need to set both of your collision objects distance settings in the Collision Parameters when you import each one so that they are working with each other, and not against one another where one will dramatically push the cloth/hair mesh inside (or outside in the case of a hat) the collision meshes. It defaults to Collision Distance 0.2 with Friction at 0.6. I have not tried this with hair and a hat, but for cloth such as the outfit I have above in the images from my previous post where one rests directly on top of the other my settings were 1) Figure collision mesh - Collision Distance 0.2, Friction 0.6, and 2) Flipped normals Hakama trousers collision mesh - Collision Distance 0.2, Friction 0.4. You just have to find the right ballance of what works. Sometimes it is trial and error. I have gone down to 0.1 on all settings, but was still experiencing clipping, or cloth mesh stuck inside of figure.
* Don't forget to re-flip your hat's polygon normals back to original (facing outside) once you are done simulating inside of VWD, and before rendering in Studio.
Unfortunately, VWD is a simulation tool, and not a one-click solution which seems what you would like, or are believing it should be. Nevertheless, I hope the workflow above helps you with the hair in hat issue.
* From "Why does DAZ Studio customers like Conforming Cloths better then Dynamic Cloths ?" forum thread, page 14:
"Cloth sim is an advanced area of CG, here or Dreamworks studio. So expect some learning curve regardless.. The pay off, its worth it though. Can't go back to lumpy doughy dresses once you've seen the real thing!" - Mythmaker
I saw a comment that I can no longer locate somewhere that mentioned something about having to reapply materials when using VWD. Can somebody elaborate, is this something I would need to consider if purchasing it, or perhaps I just didn't understand what the comment meant?
The object created by VWD shares the same materials as the original object, so you normally don't have to reapply (assuming you render in the same session).
The exception is if you save/reload the scene. Then the material settings on the vwd object disappear (it's white). In this case, you have to manually copy the material settings from the original object's surface to the VWD object if you want to render.
Since I like to save/reload my scenes, I use a workaround: Every time I run a VWD sim, I use Edit > Duplicate > Duplicate Node Hierarchies on the VWD object to create a VWD2 object. I then delete the VWD object. The VWD2 object keeps its material settings after save/reload.