formerly male content creation thread
Diomede
Posts: 15,073
Greetings,
This will be fun, and low pressure, I promise. But very rewarding.
Let us make custom content!
Inviting anyone and everyone who is interested in forming a support group to encourage more people to learn and practice making quality clothing for (male) figures. Hopefully, this will be a place where folks will share a journey to create some quality custom clothing. Even if you don't have time to make your own content, we invite you to offer encouragement and constructive criticism. Join in! - of course, the lessons all apply to female figures too so it is all good.
In addition to general encouragement and sharing of resources and ideas, some of us intend to begin a journey together. We will start a project from scratch, gather reference and concept material, create a custom mesh, uvmap, rig, include texture maps and morphs, and all of the other tasks needed to make quality content. Whether it is 1 year from now, or just 1 season from now, we hope to have produced some quality content for male figures of use to the community. To make sure the quality is appropriate, I would encourage submitting to the Daz store and going through the back and forth of Daz's quality control process, but that is entirely optional.
We won't formally start for a little while, so think about what the guys need. Please join us. will post some context and resources in the next post.
What can you do right now?
1) Post links to helpful content creation resources.
2) Post ideas and suggestions for content
3) Warn us of the inevitable challenges and pitfalls that lie ahead
4) Encourage everyone to be perseverent despite (3)!
5) Say you want to be part of this in some way
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Comments
So what brought this on? Another thread, of course.
Thread focused on the relative amount of male and female dedicated content in the Daz store
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/65161/it-s-not-raining-men/p1
Here are some useful resources.
Daz Documentation Center Content Creation Start Page
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/start
Great thread gathering many helpful resources for content creation - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14421/simplified-guide-to-genesis-content-creation/p1
Some of the available videos
old basics of transfer utility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7abESLvn0yg
another https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLB2o_FYDAw
weightmap brush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjgIC2vhRII
rigging modification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cV3VaC7eIs
more - polygon group editor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52wwyv234U
more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIIM1oAan7o
store tutorials (I don't necessarily have these so can't vouch for quality)
http://www.daz3d.com/classic-bikini
http://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-beginner-to-advanced
http://www.daz3d.com/advanced-rigging-in-daz-studio-4-pro
http://www.daz3d.com/rigging-original-figures-in-ds4-pro
http://www.daz3d.com/rigidity-grouping-and-mapping-in-ds-4-5
Some examples of stuff folks said they liked (cut and pasted from the aforementioned thread)
Uzilite's http://www.daz3d.com/m601-for-genesis-2-male-s in quality.
similar to these one:
http://www.daz3d.com/krill-minima-cyborg-for-v4
http://www.daz3d.com/robogenii
you could easily modernize the Working Man for M4 (http://www.daz3d.com/working-man-for-m4) outfit by losing the hat
Seriously, it's a treasure.
https://www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/login.php
some pics http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/937365/#Comment_937365
"I'm a big fan of Mighty Mestophacles work, and the claymore armor suit and rapier are both great sets. I like sedition soldier m4 too."
Yes, I am aware that the G3M is likely to be released mid-project. Forging ahead anyway!
Many G2F items have been adapted to G3M. No reason at all for anyone making something to not be able to adapt it to both G2M G3M (or M4 or whatever they want to make something for.)
Also, I'll join~
Also also thanks for the many great resources linked, too. One of the most frustrating things about DS is how decentralised all of the information beyond the basic intro manual is.
I've bookmarked this and thought I would add a few links. The videos show modeling a dress. I couldn't find anything modeling clothing for men, but the basic concepts should work for men as well. We may have to make a few tutorials and upload them at a later date so that the men are represented, but I honestly haven't a clue how to make tutorials like these.
DAZ's Jen Greenless' video tutorials:
Making a Dress in Hexagon 2: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
Making a Pocket
Making Trim
These videos are all ones that I've watched and used to make my first dress in Hexagon. I also have Blender videos that I'm slogging through and will add links that I find for anyone wanting to use Blender which is a free program. I just recently got copies of Maya and 3DSMax and I'm also looking for videos that will help make clothing in those programs as well. I'll add links as I find them if I think they will be helpful.
Not sure how indepth this will be for a bignner at modeling like me but I too have bookmarked this as I am very interested.
I suspect that each of us will be a beginner at some part of this. Although I have been modeling content for Carrara for a while, I actually am a Studio beginner. But we can support each other.
Here's some more resources
JoeQuick's
G2M starter meshes...
http://www.sharecg.com/v/73630/gallery/5/3D-Model/G2M-Starter-Meshes
4th Generation set
http://www.sharecg.com/v/67360/gallery/5/3D-Model/Quicks-Quick-Resource-Meshes
I've been using Blender for a few weeks and Daz for a couple of months, no 3d experience before that.
What would be a good item to start with? A top? Full body armour is appealing but might be a bit much right out the gate, something requiring a decent range of rigging would be more ideal for learning...
I'm going to reproduce some text tutorials I wrote for another Published Artist, because this is probably too large an area for me to do a full pictorial/video set on my blog (and changes a bit every generation). I've been sick for two weeks now, so anyone feel free to add/amend, especially since I would rather poke myself in each eye than try to explain weight mapping in text.
The fastest way is still to start out with Transfer Utility from the source figure to your clothing obj. Then tweak maps and add extra bones and JCM as needed.
The biggest thing is JCMs. You can't get by without these for G3 because all of the bones have single axis rigging only (not three as with TriAx), so only one map controls side to side, bend and twist. If one of those does not look right, you can't do much to the weight map without messing up the others. And you can't depend on G3's transferred JCM to fix it, in many cases they make things worse instead.
So your workflow goes:
1. Make the clothing in your modeling software. UV Map it and give it materials. Export to obj. Do NOT make it to an FBM, make it to the base figure in zero pose.
2. Import the obj into DAZ Studio.
3. Start transfer utility; it looks like an arrow pointing up and to the right (the icon). For source choose G3 and target choose your clothes.
4. You can use a template in the dropdown if you want to try that. Most do not work better than the body as a starting point for a final product.
5. When TU is finished, save the clothes to library, delete and reload.
6. Now is the time to add more skirt bones in the bone editor if needed (it looks like a bone with a bandaid across it, and right-clicking in the 3d window accesses its menus). You will also have to add weight maps for each new bone. I can go into that if you get to that point and don't know how.
7. When all the bones are added, right click in the 3D window and choose memorize--memorize figure rigging, then save. This is important!
8. Delete and reload again.
9. Now it is time to do JCM. First do this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgF5Di…
Then, when you have found the bends that still need correction after rigidity, then do this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HKdAk…
When that is finished, save again, reload again, and test. You will almost always need thigh side-side and bend JCMs for males because of the crotch bulge. The best way to set up a double (for two joints at once) is to freeze it to one side and set up the other as an "attenuate."
Then there is the making of custom FBMs or PBMs or support:
1. Dial in the morph in the figure, with the clothes on.
2. Hide the figure, leave the clothes visible (clothes must be at base resolution, sometimes leaving smoothing on helps, though).
3. Export the clothes to obj.
4. Import them to your modeler and reshape them to fit the body morph properly. I keep a file for Blender of the major morphs I want to support and update it periodically, so I can just use that and not re-import the cleavage morph (Victoria 7, etc.) repeatedly.
5. Export it again. Make sure it has the full correct name of the morph you want it to replace, e.g. FBMMichael7, not Michael 7 Body.
6. Start Morph Loader Pro (icon looks like a flexing biceps) and click on "Choose Morph Files" to navigate to that obj. Make sure "Overwrite Existing/Make Unique" is right-clicked and set to "Deltas Only" (if you don't you will get an error and it will fail). Then Accept.
7. Now MLP will run and tell you if it worked. If it does, your replacement morph will appear instead of the broken auto-generated one.
With the actual PBMCleavage morph it's also a bone pose, so loading it takes a special procedure. Let me know when/if you get to that specific one and we'll go into it.
If you are making a fixit or style morph that is not meant to replace another, you need to also right-click on Morphs/Morph Loader Pro and change it to Actor/Style or Actor/Adjustments (depending which is more relevant - for e.g. pants legs are more a Style morph where anything that is a clip fix is an Adjustment morph). I think they allow Actor/Movement too.
For saving morphs without resaving the entire item it's file--save as--support asset--morph assets. Then check just the ones you want to save.
Additional: When I'm making an outfit with a lot of custom bones, e.g. long loincloth flaps front and back, I use a different starting workflow. I have no clothing product like this for G3, but I've done a lot of it for my template packs.
Assign vert groups to the relevant areas in the modeling software. Every face has to have an assignment, but you can assign the entire upper body to one called chest if you like; we're going to get the non-custom bones from the G3 via transfer utility later. What's important is that you have all the face groups for LoinclothFlap01, 02, etc., set up and in order, and the bone or bones to which they are parented (whether that's the hip for flaps, the forearm for sleeves, etc.). Ideally you need the full chain from the hip to your customs roughed out.
Export to obj.
In DAZ studio, go to the Figure Setup tab. Create one if one does not exist.
In the left panel, right click and then navigate to your obj to load it.
Make sure there's no (null) group. If there is you may need to go back to your modeler and check for unassigned faces.
Drag the geometry over to the hierarchy on the right. It will populate, creating a bone for each new group. You can grab and drag your customs onto each other and their parents in order here. You can also right-click on the letters "XYZ" over on the far right to change rotation order. This is important because vertical bones generally need to be YZX instead. You can look at a G3 for examples of what bones need what order.
When your hierarchy is set up, click "create" down at the bottom. It should generate your clothing item in the 3D window. Load a G3 if you don't have one.
Go to the weight map editor (looks like a paintbrush with things on it). Right-click and choose assign based on face groups (that's not the right term, I'm not remembering it correctly, but that's the idea). This will set all the groups to 100% weights, which isn't ideal, but is a good starting point for extra bones. Then right-click and also go down to the convert options to convert to General weight maps, then Clear the Triax maps.
Memorize figure rigging. This is also from the right-click map in the bone editor (icon looks like a bone with a bandaid across it). This is very important. After this you can save to library, delete and reload in case of crashes (recommended to do this often when working with larger custom rigs).
When you've reloaded the new outfit:
In polygon select mode (icon looks like a bunch of verts in a square arrangement) you can look at the Tools panel and just select the face groups of your custom groups. Right-click and from the visibility options choose Hide Selected.
Start transfer utility.
Use G3 as the source and your clothing as the target. Go down to the expanded options and under "Weight Maps" check "Respect Hidden Facets On Target" and "Merge Hierarchies." Uncheck Face Groups if you want to keep your custom face groups, otherwise Transfer Utility will destroy them.
You can add a smoothing modifier here or later. Click Accept. The result should be an outfit with your hidden custom bones retained but the existing bones copied from Genesis 3.
Unhide your new bones and select all their face groups. Use CTRL and + keys in Windows to expand selection.
Select all the new bones in Scene tab, too.
Now go to weight map mode again. Right-click and choose Weight Editing--Smooth Selected. Set the sliders to about the midpoint or a bit lower and Accept again. It will smooth your custom groups.
You may need to tweak the weight maps with the Smooth brush at the intersection of the original groups and your customs. It's always better to use the Smooth brush than the Paint brush. Make sure you save after each significant change.
If you get the disappearing cursor error, select G3 and then select your clothing again, and it should go away.
Hope you are feeling better SY. That is a lot of information which at this point I don't understand. However, I am almost finished making my first article of clothing, a dress using Jen's video tutorials using Hexagon 2 and will soon need to figure out how to do all of the stuff you just described. Her tutorials handle the design, but doesn't go into any of the "now it's made, get it back to DAZ and actually be able to use it part". So, when I actually send it to DAZ, I'll be following your directions. I have watched a few of your tutorials and so I have high hopes I'll be able to do this. You are what got me to the point that I can successfully render something in Iray. I appreciate you taking the time to post so, hopefully, I (and others) will be able to follow this as well. It will be interesting to see what we can all come up with for those 3D men.
This is amazing, thank you, SickleYield.
Okay, I'm up for a little modeling in my old age...
Anyone have a prop concept they want to see?
Thanks for that, SickleYield! I've been dabbling in morphs, geografts, and rigging. Might be a good time to play with making some clothing and accessories.
May I make a suggestion?
Those who are just beginning to make clothing - start with something easy! Make a Tshirt or plain skirt. If that works out OK you will want to make more. If you make something too complicated and it doesn't work, you'll be disheartened and give up!
I am up for this....at least I hope I am. I want to make clothing for both Male and Female. I just need to get started. I had an HD failure and lost my first item which was a tank top for Gen 3. At that time I was having trouble figureing out UV maps and Textures in Blender - it just wouldn't work for me (I was most likely doing something horribly wrong). Now I have Blender and Silo2 so perhaps I can actually create something this go round. ;)
Thank you, Sickleyield, for such a detailed response. Very generous. I intend to design my project for the base Genesis 2 male figure. If I read your posts correctly, there would be a few extra factors to take into account if I were to plan for the (as yet unreleased) G3 male figure.
At this stage, I encourage people to explore some ideas for a project. Historical? Science fiction? Contemporary occupations? Fantasy warriors? Cultural? Beefcake? We are just brainstorming right now. But there are some things to take into account. For example, as SY mentioned above, a drooping loincloth will typically need extra bones. Similarly, a toga or robe that has a skirt requires some additional steps. Fingers require additional detail for gloves. Don't necessarily let complexity dissuade you if you really want to do a project, but do take it into account.
To that end, I am leaning toward a contemporary occuational project. I walk by some construction zones every day. I did a search of the Daz store for a construciton worker for M4,Genesis, and the Genesis 2 male and did not see this particular outfit. Similarly, I did no find this outfit at Rendo. I did find some contruction worker models on turbosquid for beween $75 and $150, but nothing designed for the Daz figures. If anyone knows that my search missed something identical, please let me know.
Here is the result of some basic background searching. I will supplement these and other search results with a picture of a poster of the worker equipment that is on the site that I walk by every day. As you can see, the core of this project will be a t-shirt and vest. In addition, there are quite a few accessories, such as the helmet, boots, and gloves.
And people do not have to limit themselves to clothing. If you are more interested in creating a custom skin texture or hair or whatever, and you know how to get started, I am sure the boys need more of that as well.
There is a workman bundle for M4 at RDNA I picked up with some of that - can't give you a link as I am at work just now and having a mental blank on who made it.
I'd like to join in but don't know if I can find the time. I have bought a few tutorials in the past on making clothes but always there is a new hurdle DS throws at us I need to get my head around first - like Iray. But I'll follow the thread and taken notes for the time I win the lottery and can give up working :-)
Thanks, 3Ddreamer. I will take a look. Meanwhile, I will illustrate a quick bad unsatisfactory beginner level workflow for gloves. With all of its gaps, this will show how quick it can be to generate something that can be used in Studio. Then as SickleYield outlined above, we can talk about the various deficiencies and how each step can be made so much better.
Here we go, bad and inadequate gloves - but gloves that work nonetheless.
1) Open the modeling program of your choice. There is a bridge to Hexagon, Blender is free (as are some others), but whatever you want. I use Carrara for the moment so the first two screenshots are from there, and the last 3 screenshots are Studio.
2) I started by importing the envelope obj file that I had saved earlier. You can start with the starter obj saved by Joe Quick pointed out earlier in the thread. (Thank you, generous people).
3) I selected the hands and wrists, then used the inverse command to delete everything but the area that would become the gloves. [First Screenshot]
4) I used my modeling program to create a cufflike band at the wrist and added some detail to the fingers. Just keeping it simple, but we will disuss later some flaws in my basic gloves. For example, the cuff like band has too sharp of an edge. There are easy ways to address that but we can talk about those later. The name of the tools might vary among programs, but it is often called edge fillet. I made little to no effort to make it a clean model, by which I mean (1) having the polygons all be 4-sided "quads" of (2) roughly the same size yet (3) preserving good edge flow where morphs and bending are likely to occur. There are techniques to tranfer from larger quad areas to more detail. Hopefully, the modelers will jump in later and talk about improving quality. But for right now, I have the basic mesh of a pair of gloves with a cuff-like wrist band.
5) Within the modeling program, I created separate material zones (or shader domains) for the cuff band, thumb, fingers, and hand. Again, hopefully the experienced folks will help us all with the best practices for material zones.
6) Within the modeling program, I created a uvmap. [Second Screenshot] This uvmap sucks! However, it is good enough to illustrate. Again, hopefully the experienced people will help us understand uvmapping principles, including creating seams and pins to unfold a map when appropriate. One sign of a good uvmap will be that if a checkered map is applied then the map will not show distortions. There are other important features such as preventing overlaps and matching seams. More to do.
7) I saved these crappy gloves out of my modeling program as an obj file. The settings may vary from program to program. My program has a menu option for saving for Poser/Studio location.
8) I then imported the gloves obj into Daz Studio and made sure that they appeared to fit the base G2M. [Third Screenshot]
9) I then used the transfer utilty, with G2M as the source and the glove obj as the target, to transfer the rigging of G2M to the gloves. This is very basic, but it works. [Still 3rd Screenshot]
10) The gloves are now a figure that can be saved to presets, conformed to G2M, and follow the basic poses. [4th and 5th Screenshots show different shaders applied to material zones and hands in different poses]
11) These gloves don't have any buttons or metal rings that we would have any special worries about deformation. The gloves don't have any areas to want to apply an open or close morph. So a good workflow is not finished yet. There is still the issue of potential extra bones, weightmap, etc,
OK - these are crappy gloves. But it illustrates the simplest workflow. We will learn how to make these much, much better at every step. And that will be just as much a matter of hard work and patience as talent. This exercise is not meant to fool anyone that quality stuff can be done easily. Quite the contrary, it is meant to illustate that Daz has made the basic steps open to everyone. Quality stuff will be largely a matter of effort and frustration and perseverence. Yes, talent will help a LOT. But effort will help just as much, if not more. Your content creators work hard.
There's the Toolboi outfit by BadKittehCo, which used to be at RDNA but is now at Rendo. Maybe it's the one you were thinking of?
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/toolboi-summer-collection/110664/
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/toolboi-winter-collection/110662/
Thanks, Leana. That toolbox summer collection is not safe. He is wearing a tank top and short pants, for goodness sake! It does not comply with the requirements in my construction site reference pick above. LOL
OK, I'm not dead set on the construciton outfit, although I think there is still room for it because there are enough differences. I might still do construction, maybe some variation. Will give that more thought. I encourage more exchange of ideas. Maybe I could do another occupation? Some historical period pieces? An underrepresented culture?
I encourage everyone who is playing along to share some ideas and reference pics. And even if you're not, I'd still encourage some ideas and reference pics. Meanwhile, I will dig up some educational material on general elements of good modeling, good uvmaps, etc. for our first few steps along the process.
Even though we will not be modeling human figures, I offer the following as inspiration. Watch an artist's progress modeling the human head and face
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFqopkUTO0Q
The first link doesn't work. I think that semi-colon is messing up the link because it causes link to add some extra characters. You might want to edit out the semi-colon somehow. I notice that it doesn't show up in the quote so I'm not sure how the semi-colon is in your post. Deleting the extra characters after the last slash does send people to the correct page, though.
I'm watching with keen interest. No time to learn to model atm, I hope to some day.
Yes, I won't link to it but it is called Toolboi Summer Collection by BadKittehCo
Yes Those are the ones - I bought them both as one bundle at RDNA, and I just tracked it down to Rendo :-)
I second that ...start with the basics.
After the t-shirt, move to a long sleeved shirt and then briefs/swimtrunks/shorts...
Be great if Connie refitted that to Genesis 3 Male when he hits. She could rake it in if it were ready soon afterwards. Add in a couple of extra new textures, iRay settings and make some good cash while making the end users very happy!
Product Suggestion:
Fantasy Armours. Fantasy/Game related, not necessarily historically accurate.
And compatible with at least G2M.
I think there are quite a bunch of armors out there for michael 4-6 but mostly seem to be restrained or limited by the idea of historic accuracy. Things that include accentuated pauldron/chest/faulds piece as well as a curving abdomen plus slim waist are basically non-existent, not to mention awesome patterns/engraves on the metal . Yes some current pieces can be adjusted but that involves a lot of extra work and even then there is no saying whether it will work. Adjusting the character might work to some extent but it becomes a pain when I need to re-dress the male characters with some other garments.
Examples of fantasy armours I would like to see on characters:
Just a search with keyword "Lineage 2 armor“ or ”Aion armor" or "vindictus armor" will yield plenty of results that are more imaginative and creative than many products out there.
Also suggestion:
Manga style short hair. Especially spiky hair styles. Seriouly I cannot find anything that is satisfactory in this category currently.
Fantasy scaves/capes: You know, something like this
http://www.bumped.org/psublog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Genga-Koei1.jpg
Can't believe a thread I started out of frustration about the lack of male content has grown so quickly into something like this. Thanks to the DAZ community for all the ideas and suggestions and actually doing something about the lack of male content. I can't wait to see what comes out of this, but I think I might need to start working overtime to support everyone who makes something. And thank you to SickleYield for all the info. :D :D
RE: simplicity. I agree. The less experience people have creating and rigging a mesh, the simpler the initial projects should be. I thought that something like one of the shirts at the following could be good. (warning, commercial) http://www.onlygolfapparel.com/ They are relatively simple, but are not so simple that important issues would not have to be confronted.