Dforce or VWD cloth. Any advice?
Toobis
Posts: 993
Am wanting to hear from anyone with animation experience in 'VWD cloth and hair' and D-force for daz. Am wanting to do some animations and needed clothing and hair to move and wanted to use the more modern G3 and Genesis 8 figures along with their hair and clothing but I also want to use and animate some old style V4/M4 figures and clothing/hair for them and feel VWD would be best for this seeing as most or all old gen clothing like gen4 and such along with the hair for gen4 are not really designed to work with D-force and would not be effected by it if I tried them with D-force.
I am not sure what to use between D-force or 'VWD cloth and hair' I have maybe thought about even using them both at the same time if its possible. Is it?
Also a further thing that has me concerned is that VWD cloth may not be compatible with any or the more G3/Generation 8 hair or clothing as I was eager to use it on some G3/G8 hair/clothing. Anyone tried it with these? does it work with them?
Thx people.
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Comments
I find DForce much easier to understand and control but it lacks the ability to move your simulated cloth interactively. They're both "crashy," and it's easier to save cloth for simulation for DForce. There's a good thread comparing the two here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/207296/dforce-vs-vwd/p1
I have VWD for Carrara, and it's excellent, very stable and would work well for what you are describing. However, I have consistantly seen other threads referencing the Studio version of VWD being very crash prone. Never seen any complains like that from Carrara users, but I don't use Studio at all except as a plugin for Carrara, so perhaps the Studio version of VWD is much less stable, and may be a deciding in factor on whether this would be viable for you or not, or whether you would instead be left only with dForce as an option instead.
I've also tested VWD for hair simulation effectiveness, and it's pretty good actually. I don't think it matters much what generation of figures the hair is for, it would work the same I believe.
Are they not exactly the same? I think just the bridge is different.
This is likely because of the very limited number of Carrara VWD users. There are some Studio users that never have it crash either. Nobody knows why. :\
Hi if you plan to have your figure actually moving you may wish to
consider VWD.
Dforce is more of a draping system for still frames
No one is doing locomotive walks without cloth explosions
from the reports I have read
Check youtube for Character walks with Dforce
Report back to this thread if you actually find any that are of this length:
No, it isn't.
Yes, they are. Here's a dance from Algovincian.
For a time VWD and Studio 4.10 wouldn't co-exist but VWD bridge was updated and they both work now. So over the past couple of days I've been able to upgrade to current DAZ and work with dForce a little. Some thoughts, but first a disclaimer: I am far from an expert in either but I have used and understand VWD better than dForce right now. So there's that.
Okay, so here are some thoughts.
Basically they both seem pretty good and do similar things. I did two sims back to back last night of a girl wearing a sundress, both simulated beautifuly. Then I added some wind to both. The VWD one looked really good, the dForce one had the skirt sort of tuck itself tightly between her legs in an unnatural looking manner. Probably with some experimentation on settings I'd be able to fix that. But since I have both, I can use the one I like most for a given situation. More tools in the toolbox!
The dForce wind node loads with a finite size and falloff, I don't know how the VWD wind nodes works. If the dForce wind node was narrow and aimed squarely at the figure that bunching would be somewhat expected, enlarging the cylinder of wind woudl probably get a better result.
How did you inflate? I'm assuming select the skirt verts and click some button?
Select the verts you are interested in and under the "Forces and Springs" section find the "INFLATE" button and click it. Then in the "Simulate" section make sure the Inflate checkbox is ticked on; You can adjust how much pressure it gets by adjusting the value up/down to taste. Useful for pillows, skirts, etc. I use it often with loose skirts (not necessarily a big full skirt but something like a circle skirt) at a low setting so they keep their shape but don't blow up like a baloon. Seems faster than making it stiffer and trying to get it to hold shape that way. Give it a shot!
I haven't used dForce that much yet, but it's seems to be very explosion prone. Probably partly my fault, and when I learn it better also the results will be better.
I have used VWD quite a lot, so I think I get much better results with it, at least for now. I especially like the feature that you can drag cloth during simulation with mouse, and it knows how to push poke through parts out of the character mesh most of the times. Also pinning etc. seems very logical to me, since I come from Blender simulations. Unlike some others, I haven't had that many crashes with VWD, so I suppose it's depending what kind of system you have. Also older items work quite well, since VWD "weld" items together, so pockets and stuff like that don't fall off immeadiately....most of time. Also VWD does quite a good job with hair simulations, but your hair mesh have to be simple. I don't know the exact limit, but it's not very high until you start to see problems, and most of the crashed I've had have come from hair simulations.
The biggest selling point for me with dForce is, that you can save the settings. I do series of images with same character using same clothes, so it's very convenient that you can save those material settings when you finally get them right. If there is a setting or something where you can do this with VWD, I'd really really love to learn that. I still have my reservations toward nForce, since even most of the PA items have just been basic dresses, that are very easy to simulate no matter what cloth engine you use. On the other hand, I wouldn't go and buy current VWD yet, since the developer is currently making GPU version ( hopefully this new version will be able to handle higher poly hairs too ). It's not "real time" simulation yet, but a pretty close one, at least in the youtube videos. I haven't checked recently what the ETA is, but at least I hope it will be finished by christmass. I don't know if that new version is going to be free upgrade for current owners, but I doubt it.
Lots of info here to get through. Can anyone tell me if VWD works with Genesis 8 or G3 clothing and hair. Anyone happen to know please?
I still have a lot to learn with both these scripts but all this info will help.
One additional thing people may wish to keep in mind (and that I'm most excited about) is the prospect of dForce being only one component of a complete integrated physics solution for DS:
"Daz 3D continues to enhance and improve Daz Studio with the introduction of dForce Physics. The first implementation will allow objects designated as cloth to simulate physical collision and interaction with other objects in the scene including a posed or animated figure. Other physics simulation types are expected to follow."
Quote taken a statement made by DAZ_Brian in the first post in this thread:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/203201/daz-3d-introduces-dforce-physics-engine
- Greg
well dforce is free so there is that
I personally find VWD more effective,
have used both in the DAZ studio public beta (as well as VWD with Carrara)
however dforce did cope with higher poly stuff that VWD could not import so there is that advantage
That's VERY exciting if they can get soft body physics to work. While there are some good "squish" morph products that help with added realism for figures colliding with things like chairs and what not, it would be really great to get that kind of environment collision look with any part of the body. To have a character be able to lay on something and have it look like she's actually laying instead of either floating above it or partially IN it would be great. With realistic soft body collision and physics, it would really take renders to another level! :)
Anyone answer my Q 3 posts ago pls.
Also had another Q while i'm here which I think applies to both VWD and D-force.... would something like a bag move in motion naturally and the way its supposed to in either of these programs? if I had say someone walking along holding a gym bag, would it sway as the guy is holding it and walks or just stay rigid?
Yes it works !
VWD lets you turn whatever you want into a cloth item so it would work with G8F clothes, hair, whatever. In fact it will even work on G8F herself.
Good example Grinch but really scary
You can dForce human figures too: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2908336/#Comment_2908336
True. Both can theoretically simulate any object (hair, clothing, figures, etc) with varying degrees of stability (what crashes one may not crash the other).
In my opinion, the main difference is welding. Auto welding lets VWD tackle a much wider range of clothing.
I predict dForce will eventually implement some form of welding. Maybe it'll be easy to use. Ideally it would be so easy that vendors would no longer need to advertise clothing as dforce-compliant because welding would have the ability to make virtually everything dForce compliant.
I would like to see some sort of welding and the parts that fail to weld correctly can be sent to the new Hexagon.
I prefer VWD, it crashes much less, explodes very rarely, and runs on AMD CPU without jumping through loops, and is fast.
Dforce shows promise, and will no doubt improve
It isn't either or, as I use both, currently Dforce is used rarely.
Welding verts in Hexagon tends to blow the UV mapping away. Somehow VWD is able to triangulate and weld the mesh and still keep the UVs intact so all your textures still work on it. The downside is that it's a different mesh now and can't be used to make morphs for the original item like dForce simulated cloth items can. But the upside is that the mesh doesn't fall apart on you so you can use less perfect meshes.
I sort of envision myself doing simple drapes of a basic skirt or a blanket using dForce because it's right there in Studio but if I don't like the result moving right on to VWD where I feel I have more control of the sim (if for no other reasons than the ability to drag the mesh around with the mouse while it sims). A little of each. I'm excited in general to have good options to try and pick the one that's best for whatI want to achieve ina given situation. A year ago our prospects for dynamic cloth seemed remote unless you had Marvelous Designer, not we have TWO great options!
Anyone had any issues of VWD crashing when using it on multiple figures? say if you had a hallway of about 5 or more? women walking along with long dresses that will flow a lot as they walk... would that cause the scene or Daz or even a computer to crash generally speaking? for all VWD users, generally speaking how many figures have you been able to animate at once using VWD on the clothing and not had to worry about it crashing?
I do animations on one figure at a time; import back into Studio and save, then on to the next. It rarely crashes for me, but can be pretty sure it will do if I forget to save a complicated pose.
One tip to reduce crashes by a lot; use the 'Stop VWD' button before closing VWD.
I wish I could get either solution to work without enormous headaches.
Nice but still no actual forward walks with below the knee dresses/gowns that I can find
I'm finding that dForce works great on items designed for it, but on the older ones I get so many explosions that it's very frustrating to use. I like VWD better for static drapes where all you want is a quick, better drape on the figure, not a full blown animation. When dForce works, it's great, but I've wasted a lot of time totally failing at it so far. Could be user error, but also could be the items I'm choosing as well. I seem to have more success with VWD, especially since moving to a newer computer with far more memory.
Well that's a bit more specific than you required at first. Given this is more complicated movement that continuously folds and creases the cloth over itself I guarantee someone can manage a simple walk.