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..for myself it has too much of an impact on workflow with my old system..
...all the more I will be shopping the "other store" to get decent rigged clothing. Unless your system has the horsepower, you are in a losing situation workflow wise.
That's the problem Diva.. I wouldn't call either of these "flowy" so to say, sure the coat could be but there's been coats with movement morps before so.. *shrugs* https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-casual-suit-outfit-for-genesis-8-males and https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-long-coat-outfit-for-genesis-8-males So unless there is some morphs hidden where I can't find them (and I have been looking for them) I can't help being rather disapointed, the product page also don't actually mention movement morphs so I assume they aren't there. *sad*
The "other shop" also has more dForce new releases than stuff without it nowadays it seems to me...
I got the same impression.
I don't buy non-Dforce clothing; if it comes with a bundle, fair enough, but generally it seems dforce items are in bundles too. Non-Dforce in a bundle would reduce the value of the bundle for me.
I'm one of those that whined at the lack realism in clothing; now we have it (Dforce and VWD). Both those options actually make non-dynamic clothing useful again; the amount of time spent getting clothes look believable was incredible, and generally had me putting projects on hold.
The only issue I have now, is lack of thickness on cloth, especially at the edges where this is litterally true; cloth is NOT infinitely thin. It is also perfectly straight - again cloth has variations, that give subtle variations on even silk-like materials which are very fine.
Daz doesn't usually issue prior announcements of new features, but you can keep an eye on the Change log for hints http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#private_channel
Well, I found that Optitex is more unpredictable and above all, more unstable than dForce.
Totally agreed. I got stuck with Poser ant its dynamic clothing engine a long time because of that. I finally switched to DS at the release of Genesis 3, dispite the lack of choice of Optitex dynamic clothes.
Barzoff: Yeah, Optitex is finicky. There are a few things I like about it (like cloth presets), but generally once VWD came out I jumped to THAT. And, again, there are things I like about VWD (like tweaking cloth mid-simulation). But, then, dForce has even more features I like so hopped again... if they ever expand ability to do dForce for hair (and they've suggested that's in the works, so here's hoping), then that will solidly sunset VWD for me.
I have Dforce clothing but I have never Dforced anything (points @Divamakeup for helping me with the perfect word!). I have not gotten to that stage yet in my 3D self education.
To each their own. I still prefer Optitex clothing atm cause I understand how to use it so much more. But dForce is growing on me... slowly.
You can actually change the pose after using dForce to drap an item, and the clothing will follow the pose, since the rigging is still there. Generally the more extreme the pose is adjusted, the less realistic the drape will look, and so re-drapes are sometimes necessary, but certainly not for minor tweaks, which are often what is needed, when you spot a hand passing through a table, or some other issue.
With Optitex drapes, and also Poser ones, absolutely no post-drape pose adjustment could be done at all, except for parts of the body that do not touch the draped item. The final drape is a static item, and will not move at all with any pose changes. I do not know about VWD regarding this, as I do not own it.
At least we can "fake" the look of thickness with a very small push modifier setting.
Laurie
I tend to just create scenes and merge them later rather than mess with subscenes, which I've never really seen the point of. I did a big (for me) religious scene with thirteen G3Ms a while back, with dynamics: one was wearing Sickleyield's Roman Clothes for G8 and the other twelve were wearing the main robe from Moroccan Dreams for M4. The workflow looked something like this:
-(please note: I do not believe in using the Iray Preview function while I'm posing, running dforce simulations, etc. Even when I'm designing a character's look, I only turn on the Iray Preview briefly to make sure everything looks good, or to test the results of different shaders. I don't have the computer horsepower to leave it on all the time).
-Work up the set and set dressing first: after converting the set to Iray, tweaking surfaces, adding some extra furnishings, I selected EVERYTHING, made them dForce statics, and then made everything except the floor and the furniture people were going to sit on invisible to simulation. Set up main camera, saved out as a scene in a special subfolder.
-Each member of the "cast" went through a process where I'd dress one of them, assign hair, halo, shape their features, choose their skin, use shaders to color the robe (I had a famous classical work of art to refer back to, and for clothing colors I tried to find a balance between what looked good with the G3M skin I was using and what the original art work had assigned to their counterpart). Then made the preliminary changes needed for dforce (Hair and halo invisible to simulation, ditto buttons on Moroccan robes, which don't play well with dforce). Saved out a scene (not subscene) with their name.
-Merged the character file to set scene, pose them, run animated dforce simulation until satisfied, freeze simulation, plant some reference cylinders that were invisible to dforce simulation to represent the character's location and their arms' position (and the sword on one guy's belt, that needed to be visible from the camera). (Note: this is a trick I believe I learned from either Kyoto Kid or another poster who dates that far back.) Parent arm-cylinders to torso-cylinders, parent that to set complex. The next part got tricky: I first had to delete the set, save out the posed G3M character as a file, then undo the deletion of the set, delete the human figure instead, and save out the set with the reference cylinders in place instead, so that I'd have a frame of reference for where I'd posed everyone. By the time I got G3M #13 posed, there were twelve sets of cylinders on the set, showing me everyone else's locations.
-Once I had everyone posed individually, I opened the set scene again, and proceeded to merge all the human figure scenes into it, deleting the reference cylinders as I went. I then did a first draft render, which I wasn't entirely happy with, and which led me to translate two characters to different locations, radically changed the poses of 2-3 more, and tweaked the line of sight on a couple more, in between lighting adjustments. I think I *might* have redraped one character's clothes as well. The computer was chugging hard enough on those parts of the workflow (perhaps 3-4 hours of work out of two months plus of not really working on an DS images but that one) that I was pretty sure something would have crashed if I'd just kept adding one human figure after another to the scene without the business of posing and saving them out individually.
Yes, but remember that it represents a large chunk of data that is embedded in the file, so the scene will take mroe disc space.
Unstable in what way??
I tried to create an optitex "explosion" by intentionally making this animation with major body & cloth intersections
I totally buggered the cloth of course, but Zero explosions
I dont recommend attempting this with "IEDforce"
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xjyaiuPLes0eYlPKv37SZyWvEsl23ETi
I don't mind dForce. Sure, I wish it was easier to get stuff to look right when doing sitting poses, but being able to use older dynamics from Poser is a huge plus.
Not to mention that Optitex stuff was limited to what the people who could afford it wanted, whereas with dForce, it's not an exclusive club anymore and we're getting a huge variety of things.
DAZ 3D must be up to something major....I've been on the same beta for months now. Last time that happened dForce was the next feature out of the gate.
I like dForce, it is somewhat OK speedwise even on a intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU. If I knew and had the motivation to model I'm sure I'd be thrilled with upgrading all that old DAZ 3D clothing to dForce on an as needed basis.
I frequently set up elements of a scene in separate files, and then merge them into the final scene. Sometimes the files include dForced items as well. I almost always use the Animated Timeline for draping, and if there are multiple files with dForce items, I set the total frame count to the same in all files.
However, there is a better way, and I've started using it all the time. Once you have completed your simulation and are happy with the drape, create a morph of the drape and save the file. When you merge the file into the main scene, the morph will merge with it. And because the drape is now a morph, you don't have to worry about losing the drape. You can also save those morphs as Morph Assets, if they are something you may want to use again.
Here are instructions I posted, modified from the step-by-step Richard posted for me: Turning Your Perfect Simulation Into A Morph (I still refer to this post often.)
I have no idea how much the morphs add to the file size, but I suspect it is less than the "chunk of data" Richard mentions above.
Like others, I find autofit to be unpredictable, to say the least! I have several V4 items I purchased when I was first getting started, naively believing they would look the same on G2F as they did on V4 with autofit, having purchased a product for that purpose. I was wrong. This was years before dForce.
I appreciate Daz's requirement that dForce clothing sold at Daz must include rigging, at least to the extend the same clothing type would have rigging without dForce. I have several long dresses that are pre-dForce that do not use rigging on the skirt, relying on morphs instead. It sounds like some PAs are still doing that with dForce dresses, with fewer morphs, perhaps.
If you purchase a dress like that, and find the skirt is useless without using dForce due to a lack of movement morphs, return the item for a refund and be sure to state it's because of the lack of morphs, making the dress unusable as rigged clothing. PAs will never know this is a problem if you don't return their products and state this is why.
For autofit to work from G8 to G3, you'll need G8 clones for G3. You can create your own using instructions from Redz. The link is posted in the Mprphs from G3 to G8 thread, but here's the link copied from Singular Blues signature: Redz's Tutorial for Adding Clones to G8F
I've used this to create clones both directions, and prefer my own clones created using this tutorial to those provided by the G8 Starter Essentials. (There is one typo in my copy. If it hasn't been fixed, it will be where you're asked to delete a figure from the scene, but it's the wrong figure. It should be obvious as it's asking you to delete the figure you need to create the clone.)
That said, I prefer using Sy's tutorial, linked earlier in this thread, to convert clothing from G8 to G3, or G3 to G8, with no need for autofit.
But it works - kinda - on hair. Even on old hair for previous generations (see here)
And it even works on pizza!
That's a slice of pizza I cut off from the pizza delivered with the couch potato props, using the geometry tool. Assigning a weightmap was a bit fidgy but in the end the tip of the slice was nicely hanging down as I wanted it to. Had to use dForce a couple of times and managed an explosion or two - when using "self collide = on", mostly not a good idea for hair and pizza it seems - but it shows, dForce can be used on way more stuff than just clothes... especially, as clothes are only pixels too, just like everything else in DAZ
...but they also have new G2 and G3 items, even Gen4 ones which I can use.
...having "lighter" system resources, I need to work with scene subsets and then merge them into the main setting. If I try to do everything in the main scene, it ends up taking forever to even move an hand or a prop. With a new more powerful GPU card, I will actually be able to use Iray view mode to check lighting shadows and make sure characters/props aren't floating above or submerged into the ground instead of having to perform multiple test renders. However the system memory/processing resources are still the same so Dforce draping time will still be a workflow issue.
Yeah I'm the one who uses cube primitives as "blocking" markers for merging characters in. Learned that from my days in set design and direction in theatre (we would place "spike marks" on the stage for set elements and props with small strips of gaffing tape, very important when using multiple sets in a production).
In a big scene, I usually would keep the cubes there after initially merging characters in, just in case I needed to move or repose "someone". For example I changed the pose of the girl in the plaid skirt in this scene so it looks like she was waving to hurry up the two teens on the other side of the tracks rather then someone out of the camera view on the pedestrian overpass. I simply deleted the character reposed her in the subset then merged her back pasting her to the cube's position.
#1 original pose #2 modified pose.
Thanks to both you and Odaa for such informative replies.
Odaa: "(please note: I do not believe in using the Iray Preview function while I'm posing, running dforce simulations, etc. Even when I'm designing a character's look, I only turn on the Iray Preview briefly to make sure everything looks good, or to test the results of different shaders. I don't have the computer horsepower to leave it on all the time)."
I do exactly the same - I can't work at the slow speed of the IRay preview so I use it only sparingly. Clearly, Odaa, you put a lot of work into a single scene whereas I create scenes at the rate of 10 or 15 per day. Of course, some are just iterations of the same scene with changes to the pose and position of the characters but often the background, props and characters change completely. I rearely have more than 3 characters in a scene - my GPU memory is already streched at that for an IRay render. But I'm encouraged to find that you do save out figures separately for dForce draping though I'm not sure what the difference is between saving as a scene and as a sub-scene.
L'Adair: "However, there is a better way, and I've started using it all the time. Once you have completed your simulation and are happy with the drape, create a morph of the drape and save the file. When you merge the file into the main scene, the morph will merge with it. And because the drape is now a morph, you don't have to worry about losing the drape. You can also save those morphs as Morph Assets, if they are something you may want to use again.
Here are instructions I posted, modified from the step-by-step Richard posted for me: Turning Your Perfect Simulation Into A Morph (I still refer to this post often.)"
This was the idea I had for saving drapes when dForce first appeared. I had tried VWD and, for some unremembered reason, saving out a drape as a clothing morph is not possible (maybe something to do with the fact that VWD creates a second version of the clothing). I now wonder whether the use of that exact pose in other scenes will be required often enough to save it. Still, I'm increasingly encoraged that other people also merge scenes when using dForce. I have no idea what I did wrong when the simulation data was reset after the merge, however. I've since tried with a scene (not sub-scene) and the drape came back intact.
As for clones, I had not attempted to create my own but maybe it is worthwhile following that tutorial. Thanks. I have, however, tried the other way - changing the scene identification - and that has worked even without the transfer rigging step described in the tutorial.
...there are also G8 - G3 clones now available in the store.
I've noticed this as well with a lot of dForce clothing (usually not buying it in that case). Is that because it's difficult to make thick edges with dForce or does it cause problems when draping or what?
That's not necessarily true. Just change the Scene Identification on the G8 item to G3 and most of the time it works perfectly. I say most because sometimes you need to adjust the shoulders a bit on some of the clothing, but most of the time it works perfectly.
Load the G8F item into the scene with nothing else in the scene selected. Then click on the little arrow and lines icon in the upper corner of the scene tab. Select "Edit" >> "Scene Identification" then at the bottom where it says "Prefered Base" click on the little "..." and navigate to where it says "Genesis 3", down arrow to "Female" and hit "Accept".
Here's some G8F dForce clothing on Mei Lin 7 using the above technique:
I do recommend clones though if you can get them. As I'm sure it makes it easier and faster to fit the G8 items to G3. :)
That looks good there Diva. Good technigue.
May the Dforce be with you all, always!
I used Optitex a lot and have several dynamic clothes, some I bought, some I got for free on Optitex site. Here is the problem I got: some clothes make DAZ Studio crashing when I load them and some don't. Fortunately, I found that if I load these problematic clothes first and then the character, DS doesn't crash. Don't ask me why. The artist in me doesn't wonder.
Oddly, all the free Optitex clothes I have never make DS crashing. Go figure.
How is an update to dforce and Iray going to affect ppl like me with an older card? I only have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (192 bit)(2GB dedicated). I currently use dforce with rare issues except once in a while DS will shut down. And for the most part, I use Iray pretty well for a lot of things, but for things with heavy weight textures it will switch to CPU. Buying a new card isn't an option right now.
I bought the dforce Classic Long Hair and had to return it. My computer got laggy, I got it to pose and run the sim, but I couldn't render it without DS shutting down each time. I ended up returning it.
All in all, I don't have a problem with dforce clothing, except for the price. They're all pretty expensive, and don't have the same appearance and details that regular items have. I know Daz requires dforce items to have some rigging and morphs so that ppl who don't want to use dforce can still use the clothing, but a lot of the dforce stuff is flimsy looking, and lots thin flowy clothing. I like the idea of dforce, but to me it doesn't beat the look of regiular clothing.