Tips and Tricks of DAZ Studio Optitex Dynamic Clothes
SimonWM
Posts: 924
I hope people with experience using Dynamic Clothes in Studio will join and share their tips and tricks in this thread as I keep reading misconceptions and misinformation being transmitted in the forum. Hopefully this thread will help people that want to learn how to use the software plugin, basic and advanced and clear some misconceptions. I'll try to come by this post once a day and discuss.
One of the myths I keep reading about dynamic clothes is that you cannot resize it. Dynamic Clothes can be resized to fit to a much smaller size frame than the default size it was created for. With this feature you can go from a baggy look to a tight fit to skin-tight. You can also re-size pants or shirt to a perfect fit. You always need to start from a version of clothes that is bigger than your character is, like a large or X-Large size of clothes on a medium or small size person. You also need to have the advanced plugin for this:
Dynamic clothes is made of panels that are stitched together, just like a sewing pattern. You can quickly check your pattern in the UV View of DAZ Studio.
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Every cloth panel has a set of properties that can be edited in the advanced plugin.
The Properties we use to scale the clothes are "Shrink X%" and "Shrink Y%"
Lets use a very simple piece of cloth, "the tablecloth" which consists of just one panel to observe the effect those two sliders have on the panel.
Lets start with the "Shrink X%" slider. This controls the amount this particular panel will shrink in the X axis direction.
And the “Shrink Y%” slider will controls the amount this particular panel will shrink on the Y axis direction.
So its almost like visualizing the opposite. You want to shrink a panel along the X-axis you use "Shrink Y%". You want to shrink a panel along the Y-axis you use "Shrink X%".
You can also shrink the panel both ways:
Now lets put this to practice on a more complex piece of dynamic clothes. Lets say the Jeans suspenders. I have loaded the Freak 5 Jean Suspenders on Gianni 6.
At its default, if you run the simulation, you will obviously not get a good fit because the Freak is bigger than Gianni.
Notice also that I have unlocked the Freak Jean Suspenders in the scene tab (that's the little X next to the scene name, you need to click it so it turns into a check mark so you can select panels). Then I have used the Surface Selection Tool to select all the clothes panels that make up the suspenders and increased the Shrink X% value to 11.13 in the Panel Tab cloth properties. ( I have also increased my friction so the suspenders stay in position and don't slide off his body.)
Result: now the suspenders have become shorter.
I've also select the panels that create the pants and shrink in both X & Y to create a tighter fit.
This is it for now. Hope this can help some of you people struggling with understanding DAZ Studio dynamics.
A much better explanation than I think I could ever do. I've done refitting like this pretty much ever since I started using the advanced plugin: needs a bit of effort to wrap your head around the concept to begin with, but running through the options quickly becomes routine and I can usually fit almost any dynamic cloth to almost any figure, given enough time, lubrication, and a few carefully applied shoehorns.
Just one little complication I've come across over the years — see the UV View in the first post? Which way the cloth shrinks when you use the X% or Y% slider depends on which way round that particular cloth surface is in the UV layout. Remember, this stuff was set up by a program that made real shirts, dresses, etc. out of real rolls of real cloth, so its priorities were different from a 3D content creator trying for a properly efficient UV layout. This means there's no guarantee using X% shrink on one material will shrink it the same way as using X% shrink on another material. E.g. when I use the bikini top in the Design Kit — I think that's the right one — the straps shrink in the opposite direction to the bikini front bits. (This also means the UVMaps for any Optitex dynamic cloth are horribly inefficient, but there's nothing we can do about that.)
That was informative and I wish there was more to this thread. Dynamics are wonderful. It don't always work the way you expect and the lack of documentation doesn't help.
For instance: polo shirt collards, both the M4 one and the free one for Luke... They do not behave as they should a and constatntly penetrate the mesh in ways they should not. Anyone got an explanation on how to make that work?
Try posting an image that shows your problem with the polo shirt collar-- I'm not familiar with that one.
Another tip: because the panel pieces are laid out as if to cut fabric, fabric material shaders work very well with these clothing items. Mariah's Fabricator sets, for example, can give any of these a whole new look.
The other trick I find helpful is to pin parts of a garment in place. Simon showed how to increase friction on the suspenders in the example above to keep them from slipping off the shoulders. If that's not enough, you can parent small primitives to the shoulders of the figure so they intersect the cloth you want to hold still, and then hide the primitives. Include the primitives in the collision list for the dynamic cloth. This keeps that part of the cloth from moving around.
Another user answered your polo shirt question here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/567953/
Thanks for pointing this out. Tried several different iterations of weight and thickness, all to no avail. The collar just collapses.
Regarding the jeans suspenders, I want to use them with a Genesis 2 Female character, just without the suspenders. I'd like to make them more fitting around the pelvis/thighs, but looser around the shins, to make them crumple around the feet. Is there a way to do this? Because it seems that the legs are essentially one surface that can be edited in the dynamic clothing panel, so shrinking them will make them fit better, but will also raise the shins too high.
As shown in the attached pics, I'd like to keep the shins basically the same, but make the rest of the jeans a closer fit.
I've bookmarked this topic, thanks for the information!
This is one of the trickier parts of the Dynamic Clothing tab. Exactly how are you shrinking the jeans? Just "shrinking" the whole thing won't work. Selecting the individual surfaces is the key — and "essentially one surface" for the legs isn't quite accurate, you have a front and back for each of the right and left legs.
The really tricky bit is that you can shrink the cloth along the X or Y axis independently — with the surfaces front1, front2, back1 and back2 selected, in the Dynamic Clothing Panel sub-tab, shrinking X by a few percent makes the legs shorter, and shrinking Y by a few percent makes them a more snug fit.
One thing to watch out for; if you shrink the waist of the jeans too much, it will begin to slide up your figure's body until it hits the narrow point of the waist. I've seen this cause a truly amazing wedgie. Adjusting the friction settings will sometimes, but not always, help to avoid this.
This technique does take quite a lot of work to get used to; I've been playing with it since the Optitex dynamics first came out, and I still have to do a lot of fiddling to get it to work the way I want. It is not always obvious which way round you need to shrink. Once you do have it figured out, though, it is a very flexible technique that lets you fit dynamics to fairly severely morphed figures.
Note, though, that you can only put positive percentage values into the shrink parameters, negative values (to expand the cloth instead of shrink) will cause the drape to go out of control and fail catastrophically.
This is one of the trickier parts of the Dynamic Clothing tab. Exactly how are you shrinking the jeans? Just "shrinking" the whole thing won't work. Selecting the individual surfaces is the key — and "essentially one surface" for the legs isn't quite accurate, you have a front and back for each of the right and left legs.
The really tricky bit is that you can shrink the cloth along the X or Y axis independently — with the surfaces front1, front2, back1 and back2 selected, in the Dynamic Clothing Panel sub-tab, shrinking X by a few percent makes the legs shorter, and shrinking Y by a few percent makes them a more snug fit.
One thing to watch out for; if you shrink the waist of the jeans too much, it will begin to slide up your figure's body until it hits the narrow point of the waist. I've seen this cause a truly amazing wedgie. Adjusting the friction settings will sometimes, but not always, help to avoid this.
This technique does take quite a lot of work to get used to; I've been playing with it since the Optitex dynamics first came out, and I still have to do a lot of fiddling to get it to work the way I want. It is not always obvious which way round you need to shrink. Once you do have it figured out, though, it is a very flexible technique that lets you fit dynamics to fairly severely morphed figures.
Note, though, that you can only put positive percentage values into the shrink parameters, negative values (to expand the cloth instead of shrink) will cause the drape to go out of control and fail catastrophically.
By "essentially one surface", I meant that instead of being split into thighs, shins and feet, the legs are merged together. I think the pelvis is also linked to the legs. Thanks for the tips, I'll give it a shot and see what happens. The main problem I'm encountering is how loose the jeans are around the crotch. I want to make them a tighter fit on there and the thighs, but less so on the shins.
BTW, does changing scale settings for individual clothing parts in the parameters tab actually affect anything, or will it always just scale back to its normal value when draping?
Thanks for pointing this out. Tried several different iterations of weight and thickness, all to no avail. The collar just collapses.I just found this thread. It has some good tips. I wasn't able to make the polo shirt work either, using the weight and thickness tip. No suggested values were given in that tip, so I wish I knew what values to try.
I noticed that the collar panel is set to layer 2 and the rest of the shirt is layer 1. The collar also has different cloth properties than the other panels. Are those factors supposed to control this problem? Maybe the plugin is not working correctly.
On the Dynamic Clothing tab, the panel option allows one to select the area or all areas to change; the only problem is that these are usually just numbered; is there a way of finding out which part does what?
And also, I presume with the shrink options, that the x and y correspond to x and y in 3D space? A sperate z would be useful, although height is certainly affected.
Z is controlled in preferences by Collision Tolerance and Internal Pressure
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/dynclothctrl/overview
Collision Tolerance: Collision Tolerance is the tolerance, or distance fro the surface used when collision is being detected. This is an extremely useful tool when using multiple layers. For example, if you wanted to drape the Gaucho Jacket over the Ultimate T, you could increase the Collision Tolerance on the Gaucho jacket. Increasing the tolerance will make the cloth drape further from the figures surface
Internal Pressure: Internal Pressure can be used to have the clothing appear as if there was a volume pressure inside the clothing affecting it. For instance, the higher the Internal Pressure value, the more the clothing item acts as if it was filling up with air from within.
No, they correspond to X and Y measurements on the UVmap used by the selected material. Select the cloth, switch the Viewport camera to the UV View, and select each of the materials one after another; you'll see which way round each material actually is.
Note that this isn't always obvious; most of them will be set out on a left/right axis, but some will be up/down, or even curved or at a weird angle. The problem is that, unlike everything else in the DAZ store, the content creator has no control over setting up the UVmaps for each material in dynamic clothes. As we've been told since the beginning, the Optitex plugin is developed from a huge, expensive program for designing actual real-world cloth clothes. The UVmap is automatically laid out — not for best use of the texture area for use in 3D programs like D|S, but for most efficient cutting of cloth to make up the physical bits and pieces of shirts, trousers, etc. that get physically sewn together with thread. The two needs are sometimes very different, if you rummage around in the UVmaps of Optitex dynamic cloth you'll come across many things that are horribly inefficient or just plain weird by modern DAZ standards. It's something we're pretty much stuck with, I'm afraid.
Thank you SpottedKitty and SimonWM.
Pretty sure I'll have more questions soon. :)
I have a query on the Dynamic Sheets http://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-sheets; they should be great for draping in a studio setting, but there only appears to be a double option. it does say there are four size options in the info.
I know some items have an an option in the parametrs tab to switch - Michael 4 shirt has an open or closed option (http://www.daz3d.com/ds-dynamic-dress-shirt-for-m4).
I dont see it anywhere on the sheet, only the sheets prop, four material options with nothing in parameters to switch it.
What am I missing?
If you select the sheet in the DCC tab, at the bottom you should see a Style option, where if the item has different options (such as size for the sheets) you will be able to select it there.
If you select the sheet in the DCC tab, at the bottom you should see a Style option, where if the item has different options (such as size for the sheets) you will be able to select it there.
TY
Sucks there's a sale on SimonWM stuff and I'm broke.
Can we have some Dynamic clothes for Victoria 7 please. :)
Skirts, underwear mostly as there is other stuff out there.