dForce and Hexagon
motoglyphs
Posts: 39
I've been applying dForce to legacy clothing with some success,
but when I need to stitch clothes together in Hexagon, I lose the
dForce shader settings, and they don't appear when I add them.
I've tried this with no edits to the garment, same problem.
Is Hexagon incompatible with dForce?
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Hexagon has no idea what dForce is. If you are changing the geometry (i.e., "stitching clothes") in Hexagon, when that geometry comes back across the bridge it is seen as a new object and therefore has the default material.
another way of extending on what Cris says above: The original UV (surface) maps of your starting object meshes (e.g. clothes) are bound to the *exact* geometry (vertex/polygons) mesh that they were created for. As soon as you change (add, combine, or delete) any points or lines in any object mesh, you must also (somehow) regenerate the UV maps to match the new mesh. None of the mesh editors that I know of do this automatically (could be wrong), but a few tools can be finessed into doing what you'd like to do. (FWIW, Morphs have this same 'exact' geometry constraint - you move vertex points around when making morphs, but you cannot add, remove, or combine them when creating morphs - the ending count and order must exactly match the starting count and order, or the morph import process will fail.)
There are a couple of threads here in the DAZ forums that describe the use of Blender or UVLayout (i think) to load, regroup things, and then weld nearby points as you'd like to do, and save back the mesh with the desired changes also reflected in the UVmaps (which are now different from the originals, but will work as you expect in any rendering context, including D-force). Again, others may have magic tools that do this better. I'm hoping so! I don't believe Hexagon can do this, so any mesh changes like welding mean you have to remap the UVs, or make new ones in Hexagon, or a UV editor like UVmapper, UVLayout, 3DPainter, or most other mesh editors as well. (others who know better can advise as to the benefits of the various tools.)
There's also a good youtube tutorial (sickleyield?) on using DS and D-force tools to 'freeze' things (as if you welded them?). I have an interest in this as well, but no experience using any of it yet. I haven't gotten to that part of my project...
Let us know if you find anything that helps!
cheers,
--ms
(edited to clarify)
Indeed, it strips the dForce settings when sending back to Daz, my problem is that I can't add them back again! Even if I don't change the geometry. But
your answer is helpful, because ultimately I would want to change the geometry, and apparently that would not work. So thanks!
That's helpful MS thank you! Even though it's not what I wanted to hear :)
I've been using the dForce weight map to immobilize certain things, and that works great.
However it does not help with buttons that aren't welded on, because setting their
weights to zero makes them stationary, when the clothes they are supposed to be attached to
are moving. It's also a problem with hems that aren't attached, you want them to move, but
they just fall off. the weight map doesn't help with that.
For my latest project I solved it by deleting the hems! And using the dforce weight map to
keep the various panels attached where they needed to be.
Anyway thanks for taking the time to respond Chris :)
Sounds like you're generally ahead of the curve on this!
I'd still be curious if you find a way to 'fix' this in the future - please let us know if you find any tricks!
I hope our discussion is useful to those that follow, as getting some of these older items to drape correctly in any of these simulation tools would be really handy for a bunch of us (not to mention cost-effective...).
cheers,
--ms
Have had some success with keeping unattached surfaces together during simulation by using Hexagon (or ZBrush) to nudge the surfaces so that they intersect.
e.g. where a button is not attached to a surface (cloth) select three vertex from the surface/cloth and pull them up so that they are located inside the button. Thus the cloth's surface now intersects with the underside surface of the button. or pull vertex from the underside of the button down through the cloth surface.
Can be very laborious with surfaces like an unattached hem in having to nudge all the vertex around the edge of the hem and even then you may get a couple of vertex that don't maintain their proximity to the intersecting surface leaving a tag/gap after simulation.
The intersect needs to exist at the initial simulation frame thus generally don't use Start From Memorized Pose unless have set the memorized pose to have the required condition. The surfaces simulation parameters also have an effect on how well this technique works. Have never had time to investigate all the factors that prevent this technique from working.
The intersect also has implications for the rendered appearance of the surfaces as the intersect causes a poke though, the exact resulting boundaries of which are hard to predict from simulation.
The technique also works for other simulation engines (e.g. vwd).
You should realize that you increase the likelihood of the simulation resulting in an "explosion" because you've created a physically impossible situation.