My workflow for dForce

Like many folks, I was incredibly excited for the arrival of dForce in DAZ studio. I’m particularly interested in getting dresses and tops to work properly on ladies with “non-standard” figures (i.e. voluptuous, small-breasted, large-breasted, etc.). However, because of the nature of various shaping morphs, which can distort the geometry before the simulation even starts, I was only partially successful. Thus, I went back to first principles to figure out the best way to get full benefit from the simulation. Your mileage may vary, but this is what works for me.

1. Create a figure appropriate to the garment(s) you will be fitting. Typically this will be a generic Genesis figure with no morphs or posing. However, special cases will require a bit of creativity: if you are putting a men’s shirt on a female, max the “breasts gone” or “androgynous” morph.

2. Add the garment(s) to be simulated into the scene. Do not fit, parent, or smooth them to the figure. Leave them just sitting in the same space that your figure occupies.

3. Add in any other auto-fitted garments or props which might interact with your simulated garments.

4. If necessary, adjust the sizes of the garments to be appropriate to the final figure. Busty figures such as Olympia will want to wear a size “large” so that there’s enough cloth to fit without stretching out of shape, whereas a “voluptuous” mod will want an extra large. (Sizing proportions: 90%=small, 100=medium, 110=large, and 120 is XL.) Scale up the figures by the same amount so that initial fit is right. Note: You might need to “Show Hidden Properties” in the Parameters tab in order to find the scale control for garments.

5. Make sure there are no collisions between the figure and the garment(s). In order to keep optimal geometry, always morph the figure, not the garment(s). It’s okay to use “deformation” morphs like “X-Away” -- realistic figure shape isn’t vital at this point.

6. In the “Animation” tab, create a two second animation (61 frames).

7. At the 1 second mark (frame 30), create a key frame.

8. Apply the actual character shape that you want at frame 30: pre-made characters, morphs, etc. This will likely leave your garments looking horrible, but that’s fine.

9. Zero out all of the sizing/collision adjustments you made. (Let them remain at frame 0, but not at frame 30 and later.)

10. Create a key frame at the 1.5 second mark (frame 45) and apply the pose that you want. (You could put this at frame 30, but putting it later allows the shape to be established before you have to deal with potential collisions between limbs and body in extreme poses.)

11. Add dynamic surface simulation to the garments. Set the parameters however you please. (Hint: if the garment has potentially bad geometry [including seams, folds, etc.] set “Bend Stiffness” to 0.2 instead of 0.5. Lowering “Shear Stiffness” and “Buckling Stiffness” can also help.)

12. In the “Simulate” tab, set “Frames to Simulate” to “Animated (Use Timeline Play Range)”.

13. Run the simulation. If it blows up, try the adjustments described in step 11 and retry.

14. Optionally, add/enable a smoothing modifier. You can, if you like set it to collide against your figure. (It’s important that you do this now rather than before the simulation, because dForce will ignore the modifier in simulation, but display the smoothed version -- thus hiding any potential collision issues.)

15. Add the rest of your scene.

16. Render from frame 60 so that you get the full simulation effects, including morphs, posing, and “relaxation” time.

In the attached images I used “stock” Olympia 6 with a fairly extreme pose. The “auto” version uses the “Tre shirt” designed for Genesis 1 (Male), and uses auto-fit and pose following. I added smoothing and collision modifiers and hand-tweaked them to deal with collisions triggered by the extreme pose. In my opinion, the results still aren’t very good, with obvious stretching and warping and unnatural shaping around the breasts.

The “sim” version followed the procedures described above. I scaled to a size “large” (110%) and used the “androgynous” morph and various x-away morphs to avoid collisions with the masculine garb. All surface simulation settings were kept at default, but the global simulation settings were tweaked to use 10 subframes. (It worked ok with the default of 8, but there were two gratuitous collisions.) There are some very minor collisions under the right armpit, but these are inevitable because the pose is self-intersecting. A smoothing modifier has no effect on these collisions, but made the overall appearance a touch better, so I kept it. To my amateur eye, this render is quite plausibly realistic, and the Genesis 1 male garment looks like it was designed to work with Olympia 6. I’m very happy with the result.