The Marvelous Designer Thread
marble
Posts: 7,449
A discussion in a thread about an upcoming MD tutorial veered off into some general MD/DAZ Studio topics and it was suggested that there should be a dedicated MD thread. I guess this would be the place to post mini-tutorials, links to longer free or commercial tutorials, examples of your work, technical considerations (system requirements, etc.) and general interactivity between DAZ Studio and MD.
I do hope this gets some traction because I'm one of those who have bought the software to use in conjunction with DAZ Studio and have yet to get properly started.
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I downloaded this freebie by DrWatson at sharecg.
I fitted to G8M and added some extra details in MD, such as graphics, trim, tighter sleeve hem, and loops for the belt. (I'm not sure yet how those trims and buttons can translate into Daz).
Render after fitting:
Was this an MD created garment in the first place?
Yes it was made by DrWatson and distributed on sharecg as a MD project file. I didn't expect it to be such high quality because the preview of the item didn't showcase it very well at all.
There are a few places where you can find completed garment/project files (.zprj files) for marvelous designer, some of them being freebies.
I have downloaded a lot of garments from Artstation to study how other artists make patterns and create things like pockets, buckles, tied bows, padding, textures, piping, decals/graphics etc.
I think if you are getting into MD, it's probably a good idea to play with other people's garments too, in addition to making your own, in order to understand how they are made. And you can easily incorporate elements/pieces from other patterns to use in your own.
This is useful information as I have looked in the past for freebie MD garments, patterns, etc., but mostly found commercial sites. I'll take a look at Artstation which is not a site I've spent much time on other than following the odd link.
From the other thread:
@barbult, following on from that question in the other thread, can I ask how you are texturing your clothing? Did you need to create UV maps, etc?
For freebies, you should try sharecg, gumroad, cgcostumes, thefabricant
Artstation has some cheap ones but not many free outfits.
You could just type "zprj" into google and see what comes up too.
So, if I understand you correctly, you created the UV maps but didn't need them because you applied shaders instead? Have you tried using the fabrics and textures that come with MD? If so, to they import into DAZ Studio?
marble as peenwolf stated there is a good smattering of MD projects for sale and a few free on Artstation
Just looked myself and found an atist Evgeniya Petrova the artist has most of his/her MD project files for 1 to 5 dollars so not really going to break the bank
Have not got any myself as i have just read peenwolf post and trotted over to have a look at what was what .
I use just pinterest and serched for Md patterns and patterns in general and have through trial and error been able to put a few garments together not good but I am beginning to understand some of the features now
Also Artstation has artists showing a break down on some of their work and have included some very nice shots of the patterns in MD which I might try and reproduce as there is usually a finished garment which is going to be a good reference for me
So Artstation might be worth a look
Yes, thanks - I intend to do a bit of browsing over there.
I've just been occupied with other stuff the past few days - particularly Unity tutorials. I've just bought an Oculus VR headset and am told that Unity offers much better scope for making scenes for VR than could be achieved in DAZ Studio. But MD is also high on my to-do list as I spent so much on it almost a year ago and have not given it the attention it deserves. Seeing what @barbult has done in such a short time has inspired me to get into it again.
marble you may already be aware but what I have gleamed is that the mesh should have a low particle distance like 10 default is 20 i think to make the mesh act like a subdivided mesh so it corresponds better with a subdivided daz character drapes better too IMO I have like mentioned in the other thread by @barbult draped more in MD than Daz .
Its not too bad swapping around from Daz to MD and back I draped a garment in Daz dforce recently and it took 20 mins to drape in that time i could have made a simple garment and imported several posing morphs and run the simulations several times !! So for me until dforce speeds up i will be draping in MD then importing the garment as an obj into daz
MD sets up UV's for you based on the pattern pieces, and then you have the ability to rearrange them easily using the UV Editor within MD. Basically the pattern pieces become the UV Islands on the UV map. And you can spread the UVs out onto multiple UV tiles or put them in a single UV tile.
In terms of the texturing ability of MD, you can set up fabric properties within MD for visualisation and rendering within MD. Fabric properties are basically like shader properties (diffuse colour, normal map, and some other material properties). Exporting some maps from MD can be problematic (e.g., normal maps, roughness maps), but exporting the base colour/diffuse map always works fine.
On that basis, it is best to either:
1. Apply shaders in Daz. (the Material Zones of the exported OBJ depends on the fabric and pattern pieces that are set in MD)
or
2. Fully retexture in Substance Painter or something.
I am clueless when it comes to UV Maps and texturing. Terms like UDIM patches are completely lost on me. I have always assumed that shaders don't need UV maps and they are applied to material zones but I might be talking nonsense.
To be fair, I am a novice with this stuff too. I only started using 3D software in November last year and have been spreading myself pretty thin with zero guidance, so I hope i don't lead anyone astray by saying stupid things.
I am pretty confident about the following though: If you are just planning to apply DAZ shaders to your Marvelous Designer garment (OBJ file), then you can completely ignore the UV editor and also ignore any texturing in MD. You can set up the material zones by defining fabrics/patterns without worrying how the UVs look.
The UV setup and texture maps are only relevant if you intend not to go the Daz-shader method, i.e., if you intend to actually have a texture map instead of a shader. It is probably good practice to make the UV tile look nice though, just in case you want to go in later and draw in some basic details in photoshop or gimp or something. (This is because the auto-generated UV tiling that MD spits out is not usually ideal)
But basically the take home message is only to worry about UVs or texturing if you want to worry about them.
Well, I've been using DAZ Studio for about 15 years and I am still clueless about many things. It has always been a hobby for producing pictures, not for delving deeply into CGI technology. The older I get, the less adventurous and the more reluctant to waste time on things that might not help create better pictures. Funny how time wasted is a major concern these days wheras in my younger days I would have spent weeks on diversions that led nowhere.
So textures and shaders are things I have been happy to buy from professionals. As were clothes except that I was always disappointed with the (non-) draping of conforminng clothes and what I call the sheet-metal appearance of the cloth folds and bends. Then came dForce and then I saw what could be done with MD and I guess I have to learn new stuff because these will definitely help create better pictures.
One of the great things about MD is that the UV maps it produces by default are fantastic, and very true to "real world", in that for a real garment the individual pieces would be cut from a piece of fabric, thus automatically transleting the 2D of rhe fabric texture onto the 3D form of the finished garment. And that is what UV maps do, it translates the 2D of a texture to where that is applied on the 3D model. Just the way MD works means that you don't really have to worry about it.
Yes, I've see that described in a couple of MD tutorials but still have little idea how to use the UV maps to produce textures for garments in DAZ Studio. When I look at texturing tutorials I'm immediately intimidated by a couple of things:
a) I find it difficult to translate the 2D flattened image to the wrapped 3D figure so knowing where to place something on the UV map in an image editor would be akin to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey for me.
b) I am not sure that even the professionals are comfortable with seams. I have several store-bought products where seams are visible in close up. Or they don't align across the seam quite right. If they find it difficult, I don't see much hope for a hobbyist.
Some of the vendors here specialise in texturing and I can understand why that would be an area attractive to specialists. Apart from the seams problem, there's also the issue of stretching. Look at any cloth with a polka dot or chequered pattern - see how it stretches over more prominent body parts. Realism just flies out of the window when I see that. Might be my imagination but shaders seem to handle stretching a little better?
In relation to Phil's comment about the UVs that MD makes. You may still need to play around with their layout a bit to make "good" UVs that are optimised for space and arranged in a user friendly way - but this is like the easiest part of the whole process and takes 5 seconds.
If you are intimidated by texturing, then just apply shaders to the clothing. Marvelous Designer will generate MANY material zones by default depending on your OBJ export settings, so you have a lot of freedom and control to just "texture" your clothing in Daz using shaders.
Regarding your concerns:
a) There are 3D texturing softwares like Substance Painter, Zbrush, and 3D Coat, so you dont have to do the texturing in a 2D image editor. I am currently learning Substance Painter now. It is my first day using the software and I am kind of getting the hang of things so the barrier to entry isn't that great. It is basically just like applying shaders as layers with the added ability to paint in extra details/normals etc. However, i guess there is an art to it and so far my texture looks a lot worse than if I probably just did the render with Daz shaders.
b) Seam placement is not a super relevant concern with Marvelous Designer UVs because any seam will be in a realistic place for a seam to be. Afterall, in Marvelous Designer, all the UV pieces are derived from and therefore represent a fabric piece joined by seams anyway. That said, if you are adding Daz shaders to your Material Zones, then a problem could arise where you might need to do some negotiating with horizontal/vertical offsets of the shaders to get parts within adjacent material zones to match up for you if you wanted it to look like a single material zone. I think that's one of the annoying things with MD is that you don't have much control over how many Material Zones MD gives you. It seems like, upon export, you can either have 1 Material Zone for the whole Obj or 1 Material Zone for every single fabric piece. Maybe there is some setting or workflow to get around this problem... (EDIT: See Enchanted April's guide below in this thread for solution)
I would imagine, from what I've seen in tutorials so far, that you can create internal lines in the pattern and I'd guess these might produce new material zones when exported?
" It seems like, upon export, you can either have 1 Material Zone for the whole Obj or 1 Material Zone for every single fabric piece. Maybe there is some setting or workflow to get around this problem.."
Yes, it is a ticking thing during the export options: 1) all mat names has to be one word, if you need more use an underscore
2) if you export as an OBJ use the "Object (selected)" option and tick "select all patterns", "select all Graphics and Trims", "single object", "weld", "thin" AND the most important: "unified UV coordinates" and finally the "cm DAZ Studio"
This I figured out after a lot of trial and error ;) Good luck!
Here I have a nice freebie dress for MD: https://www.deviantart.com/enchanted-april/art/EA-s-Pocket-Dress-811689613
April, how do you assign "mat names" in Marvelous Designer? When the OBJ comes into Daz Studio, I get surface names like mat0, mat1, etc. I'd like to assign those names in MD if possible.
You can assign a material to each area of the patterns that you want to have the same mat zone in the Fabric editor on the right. ie:bodice, sleeves,cuffs Add new material set up material properties color etc. then drag onto pattern pcs.
How do I get those selections into Daz Studio? I set the fabrics and colors as I believe you described, but when I export to OBJ and import the OBJ in Daz Studio I still get each pattern piece as a separate surface. Maybe I am not importing correctly - or not exporting correctly.
Edit: I can see the colors when I import the OBJ to Blender.
in April's response above, they mentioned slome specific export settings, and using the "Export OBJ (Selected)" option in particular. I wonder if that makes a difference?
I can't be bothered experimenting, so I am just going to wait for someone to figure it out and explain exactly what they mean, as I personally have already made my peace with the huge-number-of-material-zones problem.
I'm doing Export OBJ (Selected).
So, to make it more clear (I hope ;)) I did some step-by-step screenshots:
If you make a new fabric don't forget to assign all the pieces you want to it! Click them in the pattern area and then click the little sign on the right side of the new fabric. Name the fabric with one word or use an underscore.
It seems I cannot put more pics into - see next post:
As you can see, my dress has many parts but with this way to export you will get the mat zones exactly as you did them in MD. I used MD8 here. I hope it helps. I had the same frustration with the thousand mats with crazy names the first times I tried to bring the garments over to DAZ. But then I've read and watched some tutos and that's the result. A happy sunday to all MD lovers here. This thread is a very good idea!!! Thank you, Marble!!!
Thanks for the instructions. That's a very helpful guide. Hopefully next time someone googles how to set or control material zones in Marvelous Designer that your comment comes up, because when I searched for answers I didn't really find anything helpful.