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Thanks again for all the information. Actually didn't know about the site, but the freebies look very good. About a year ago I bought Headus UV Layout Pro..completely forgot about it...(sigh) another pice of software to learn. I hear a lot of mixed information and differing opinions about Marvelous Designer's UV mapping capability and reliability. Not sure what it all means just yet, but I'm sure in a year's time I'll understand what the #%@& they are talking about.
Forgot to attach the files: doh!
First post here, I've been researching and using MD for a month now trying to find a workflow for production of 3D clothes for: Daz3d, Renderosity, Second Life, Standard 3D model marketplaces, imvu, sims 4, sansar and unity/unreal engine 4 with minimal number of different software needed (Namely MD + Blender + Photoshop if I can get away with it)..
Most things are clear minus the route to take for topology, thickness, morphs and normal maps. I'll be posting my findings, general ideas and hopefully someone can recommend a good flow another day.
In the spirit of providing to the conversation, a topic I have seen come up often after exporting from MD is either 'Why can't I see my seam lines in other programs or when rendering? or why is my garment extremely high poly?' Amongst other things.
For the first question, the reason the seam disappears is the fact that MD uses a normal map that it auto generates when you sew two sides together. If you select the seam line with the sewing edit tool and click on it at the bottom in the option panel to the right you can set the intensity and width of it. Set it to 0 you'll see your seam line also disappears inside MD :D
You can find this auto-generated normal map of your seam lines in your AppData/Local/CLO folder, or more easily if you go to Topstitch inside MD and press the little texture square it'll take you to all the general graphics MD is using to construct your garment like the type of stitch, normal map and zippers etc... Here you'll find a Seam_Puckering png file that has been generated in the shape of your 2d patterns that shows the seam edges for your garment.
I've attached mine as an example. Here's my issue, working out how to add this normal map to the one I'm using for the actual fabric normal map I'm using, also attached (Using Cotton_Rayon_Jersey normal map).
Second question, if you're exporting your obj with graphics and trims ticked and you've added stitching then the stiches are extremely dense 3D models (verryyy high poly). Alternatives are to export them to another program and make a normal map from them, paint them on as a diffuse texture of a simple stitch that MD provides inside MD itself and since they are so small you can get away with no height map? Sculpt them inside zbrush yourself, or try to draw them into the normal map yourself in photoshop :D No idea how to approach this but if you want reasonable polycounts then you can't export them and no zremeshing them in zbrush is an epic fail (I tried!) :D
I'm stumped on this, if I have the seam normal map, the normal map I use for my fabric and make another from my stitches, I'd need to combine all 3 to make a single normal map! I have 0 experience to know how I need to approach this!
The other fix for the seams if you don't want to fiddle with giving it a normal map or sculpting it, is to click on that same sewing line to adjust the intensity of the normal map, and in this section you can also adjust the fold angle of the seam and the strength. By default it will be 5 strength and 180 angle which will be applying 0 fold. If you want to create an actual seam fold/pucker then increase the strength between 40-100 and the angle between 190-240 and you'll see your seam appear again using actual geometry to create this illusion rather than a normal map!
Hope that helps someone! And maybe I can get help when I post next on my issues :)
@owmastersboosting - As a beginner I don't have much to add, but good information from your comments nonetheless and hopefully this thread will continue to provide answers and a narrative that helps everyone - lord knows the marvelous designer forums are quite useless. DarkEdgeDesign (https://www.daz3d.com/marvelous-designer-redux-video-tutorial) covers the making of stiches and the relevative normal map creation in zbrush, but I'm not sure if it solves the problem of the texture normal etc. He makes a morph target in zbrush, ramps up the subdivision of the garment to make the seams, then reverts back to the low poly morph target and makes his normal map - I wonder if during this process you could also add the texture with the seams to combine them all together.
Regarding normal maps for seams, I have never really looked into this, and am currently on my work laptop so unable to check myself right now. So I will ask a question and maybe you can check yourself: Do the seamlines normal data export with the full garment normal map? (You mentioned in your post that you are unable to incorporate the seamline normal map into your fabric normal map, but what I am asking is, what about the full garment normal map that you can bake from the UV Editor page?) Perhaps the seamline normal maps are incporated in the normal map that is exported from there?
On the topic of stitching, for the purpose of Daz Studio, the stitching polys has never presented a problem to me but as I said I am only using Daz. If you are making garments for other purposes, i.e., not Daz, where poly count is more restrictive, then I guess you should probably not use the Marvelous Designer stitching meshes because they might not be the best use of resources. An alternative is to just manually draw the sticthing as a texture in something like Substance Painter. There are many stitching "brushes"/"alphas" that you can buy for Substance Painter etc.
Unfortunately it does not, it should, I don't see why not but it doesn't. Maybe you could cut those out layer them ontop of your fabric normal map and lower the opacity or overlay it or use some of those youtube tutorials that teaches you to merge various normal maps but I'm not satisfied with that result completely unless it's the only way!
My purpose is to distribute content that can be used for various purposes (gaming, renders, hobby, animation, visualization, architechtural work, movies etc..), meaning I need to provide a high poly (Tris), high poly (quads, clean topology not MD one), MD file, low poly (Quads too) - which is another problem! If I want a lower poly quad model and I want to create a normal map from the higher poly, that's a 4th normal map I need to merge into there lol
I can cut one normal map out if I simply use the fold method on my seam, I mean technically this is the closest to realistic you can get by using actual geometry to create puckering but you can't control how much of the edge is affected, it pulls on the rest of the garment and it creates a larger pucker than you want rather than a steep one right at the edge. I wonder if I could offset this by putting an internal line near the edge maybe it'll only fold the garment within the confinements of the internal line and edge and not beyond it.
Also, this is what you mean by texture brushes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k5B3A
It's one of the options I mentioned above but I'm not sure how realistic that would look without a normal map, maybe because it's so small it'll create the same illusion, it needs to be tested!
FYI, those stitch brushes weren't made by the girl at CGElves, from the looks of it she made the brushes out of the PNG files MD already has for its stitches. In fact it doesn't look like it, that's 100% the case. Which is fine, it helps! I may use them, I'm not sure yet, at least to see the result of doing so.
My thinking was that trying to texture normals with a 2D photoeditor like Photoshop etc might be very complicated to line everything up, but a workflow which incorportated Substance Painter will allow you to paint layers (much like photoshop) which can apply height, colour, roughness, etc etc, onto a 3D model all at once. After you have finished painting/texturing, you can export the height information as a normal map, displacement etc.
The type of stitching brush i was thinking of is one like this: https://www.artstation.com/safwen/store/j2Lr/stitching-tool-for-substance-painter
This is my aborted attempt to do stitching in Substance
Another possibility you have is to do texturing in Marvelous Designer. See my comment a few pages back about my failed attempt to do this. You can apply Graphics/Textures in Marvelous Designer which can have a normal map. (Seems like a weird way to do it, but im just the ideas man).
Also, I just noticed... that image above is just the base mesh from Marvelous Designer without a normal map for seams, and it looks like there are seams...
If you left it as tris then it might be dense enough to show a slight seam line, or how did you export? Thin/weld? Thin/Unwelded? Thick?
How did you sew the fabrics together and did you apply any fold to the seams?
The brush he's using in substance painter are simply his own stitches that he baked from zbrush right? I really want to avoid having to learn a new program like painter/designer when it can be done using what I have!
Upon further investigation,the noticeable seams were only those where either
1) fabric was 2 layers thick (i.e., intersection between 1 layer fabric and the 2 layer fabric)
2) line where there was a fold (Fold parameters attached)
The recommendation of substance painter was as a method to texture the model, specifically, as a way to paint stitching as a texture rather than model them as extra polys. If you can add on the stitches in Zbrush as topology, and then export this as a normal map, then i guess do that, but you might still have the issue of combining this normal map with you fabric normal map. Not sure how trivial that is?
Rosemaryr explains a solution in this thread about adding a fold angle to seams.
https://www.marvelousdesignerhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=460
Im not sure how you add fold angle to a seam though. I guess if you select it while selecting an internal line, it gives you the option.
Edit: oh of course, with the edit sewing tool active.
Haha look at the bottom of my first post I explained how to do the seam line with folding :D :D
So it's just a texture he's painting on in substance painter? In which case it's the same as in photoshop but in photoshop you're doing it on a flat surface. Although I've seen somewhere that you can export your map and model into photoshop as 3D and draw it onto the 3D model!
That's what I meant above whether it would be convincing enough as just a texture because it's so small without a normal/height map. I could also draw it and tile it inside MD too!
I thought that might have been the case because models definitely do not export with seam lines as the normal map is not exported so unless you fold it there shouldn't be any.
I made this simple dress following this new tutorial on Marvelous Designer.
I didnt even know about modular mode
I didn't spot this new tutorial in 9.5, interesting this will help me so much more as opposed to manually doing the retopology inside MD!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCxZEAK_g2o
@barbult - In that example picture you posted, is the collar with the piping/binding thick or thin but looks thick due to the dark shadows?
It' possible to transform Marvelous Designer clothes into Dforce clothes?
Yes, that is what I have been doing for most things I create in MD. It works great for me. Just export from MD as thin and apply the dForce Modifier Dynamic Surface in Daz Studio.
Thanks
By turned edge, do you mean an extra bit of fabric sewn along the edge with a fold angle applied to give appearance of thickness? It seems like a great trick (as opposed to taking the item into Zbrush and adding thickness, retopo, etc), but I want to make sure I'm visualising the right technique ;)
Yes you can either do it in blender or MD with a fold, that's how peache does her clothing only the edges are turned in. I purchased her product just to see her method and she does the folds in a 3D modeling program. Here's the 4 different methods you can use attached:
This was posted in the peache thread and was directed at her product specifically so it's pointing at which way her product is given thickness. The other way is to sew a hem on the inside, which is the actual proper way to do it in real life. No faking requid and when you simulate the edge has no chance of collapsing. The other two is a more obvious and exagerrated folded edge that curls inwards further and then last one is simply given real thickness by adding more geometry (which is probably the worst way for performance reasons, and also you have less control over choosing the thickness for different parts of the clothes).
@Muscleman dForce works best with quads, not triangles, so I quadrangulate in MD before export.
Adding a Solidify modifier in Blender seems like another easy option to add thickness?
No, I don't sew on an extra piece of fabric. I use extend pattern edge and/or add internal line in MD to create the hem fabric and the fold line. You could sew on an extra piece, but that seems like a lot of extra work to keep all pieces sized correctly and stitched together correctly.
In this example, I extended the pattern edges 2mm where I wanted the illusion of thickness. Then I created an internal line offset 2mm back into the garment for the fold line. In this case, I had to stitch the sides of the extended fabric, just like the garment sides were stitched.
In other cases, it was even easier to just create an internal line and fold there, losing a bit of the garment length to become the hem.
The folded edge holds up pretty well in dForce. It gets a little rounded, maybe from dForce or maybe from the smoothing I applied. You could make a crisper line with additional (unfolded) internal lines, I think. I haven't experimented with that yet.
This is my problem with folding or adding a turned edge in a 3D modeling program and not holding it with anything, each dForce simulation can start to collapse the edge slowly. I tried this also with an imported OBJ back into marvelous with a turned edge. The first simulation holds the edge up well on its own but as you pull on it and sim it more it begins to drop and do weird things :)
It seems to be very sensitive to the state of the mesh; it works nicely with the initial unsimulated mesh that someone probably re-topo'ed, but once it's simulated and vertices get moved around, it's kind of hit-or-miss. It seems to amplify any wierdness that the simulation causes in the mesh.
I don't use MD, but blender.
But there I do it in a similar way to create that illusion. And I make the outmost row of polygons and the bended row its own material group so when I dForce it I can apply its own dForce settings primarily on buckling stiffness and ratio, and that holds pretty well under simulation.
That sounds very interesting. In that case, maybe it makes more sense to make it a separate piece of fabric stitched on in MD, so it can be assigned a different fabric and easily becomes a different surface in DS.