Draping clothing, etc.
marble
Posts: 7,500
Despite the admirable efforts of some content creators to make natural looking drape morphs for clothing, it is still a time consuming task - sometimes practically impossible - just to get a skirt to fit a seated or reclining figure. I know that there is Optitex but that is not an option for me for many reasons, not least being that it doesn't scale.
There is an old thread which mentions exporting to Blender, perhaps using a script from mcjCasual, draping it there and re-importing it. I alreadt use Blender to do simple morphs but I have never used the cloth sim nor am I sure how to get the posed figure plus dress over in order to work with them together. Any ideas on workflow, export/import settings, etc., would be appreciated.
BY the way - I'd just like to second, third, 100th. the request for a Blender Bridge!
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Comments
Blender Bridge would be awesome. I'm a tad better in blender than I am with Hexagon. That's not saying much but still lol.
Hexagon crashes too much for my frustration threshold.
Watching this, because I'd love to know how to do this in Blender too. I have managed to import the objects and make the cloth sim, but I just can't figure out how to get the draped garment back out of Blender without losing the drape.
(+1 on that Bridge too!)
zBrush seems to work well for making realistic clothing, wrinkles, draping, etc. Just do a search on youtube for zbrush + clothing or zbrush + wrinkles (something like that, I can't remember the exact terms I used).
With the GoZ export button, it is quite easy to export to zBrush from Daz, then use the "move" or "move elastic" tool to make your drape morphs. Then press the GoZ button again to add the morph as one of your dials (note, the GoZ button only works if the number of polygons remains the same. If you need to add/subtract geometry--i.e., using any other brush than the move brushes--then you will need to manually import your object into zBrush, work on it, then save it out as a new object).
...at least, this is what I do. I'm sure there are other much more knowledgable than me that can correct me if there is a better way.
Nice if you can afford ZBrush. :)
Blender bridge, yes please - hell id even pay for one that worked as well as hexagon.
I'd love to know this too. Blender's clothing sim seems useful but I'm having all sorts of trouble having it properly wrap around a Daz figure. Just acheiving a classic drapery look would be great. ie:
Two things...
1 Scale. Items drape better at Blender native scale.
2, Mesh resolution. High poly/subdivided meshes take longer (not just the item draping, but the colliision item, too), plus if you want to impoort the drape as a morph, it should be at base resolution, anyway.
Thanks for these tidbits but do you know of a tutorial or workflow we could follow? Or perhaps a combination.
I can find videos on Blender Cloth Simulation (mostly for animation, admittedly) but I'm keen on learning the process from export from DAZ Studio, through draping, and back to importing as a morph. A few screen shots of export/import settings would be a good start, I guess.
I'm trying to come up with something, but I'm not finding any skirts that I have that are being very co-operative....either they don't have a basic sit morph or they have too many added bits (belt loops, doo-dads, etc) that explode or fall off during a drape.
And without a basic sit morph, it's too much trouble to use for a quick run through.
Ahh, that's disappointing. So are you saying that not many of the conforming clothes we buy would be suitable for draping in Blender?
I do it pretty often, (though geneally with clothes I've made myself) You can add compex doodads to a vertex group and set it to pinning in the cloth to keep stuff from moving (though it still will feature in calculations and complex stuff will make for a slower calculation)
I'll post an example and my steps after dinner
Its pretty manual, and not easy, but pretty doable for most things.
It's not that they won't drape nicely, it was more prep work than I wanted to put into something for a few quick screenshots.
You need to go in and pin/attach all those things like beltloops, buttons and such. And some items need some work done to get them to look like something soft as opposed to tin. So after the basic sit morph is applied, you'll need to go in, In Blender and move things around a bit ( I find using the sculpt tools to be easiest).
Some things will go in and drape nicely without too much work...the MFD is one that is usually pretty easy to do.
And yes, things built yourself are generally much easier...because you can plan to drape them from the start. Also some Poser dynamic items can be easier, too, but very often they are straight dynamic items, with no posing/riggng so you'll need to do a multistep drape (pose part way to the final pose, drape and correct pokethrough, rinse and repeat until you are at the final pose).
I've noticed lot's of fashion content lack specific morphs, for poses other then standing. A person shouldn't have to learn additional softwares, to achieve specific morphs. This should be thought out by the content creator, whom models content. Opposite of standing is sitting. I see morphs for skirts blowing in the wind, once again standing, nothing for sitting. Over time, I've learned how to select clothing by viewing morph list of products. As I view galleries, more then half the models are sitting on a horse, chair, cars, etc..... in bikini bottoms. Content creators should take thier skills to the next level.
There are products in the store that have comprehensive morphs for tons of poses. They also tend to cost two to three times as much as those that don't. If you pay less, you will generally get a product that took less time to make. Having comprehensive movement is a "special" feature, just like having near-photorealistic sculpts and textures is a "special" feature. Special features take longer for the artist and thus, they cost more.
For those who would like to sim in Blender:
Pose your figure with the clothing on them in DS. Make sure there is no clipping except in the area you want to sim, using smoothing or included morphs (or Zev0's upcoming Fit Control, if relevant).
Hide the clothing. Export the figure at DS scale.
Hide the figure. Export the clothing separately at DS scale. Make sure it is at base resolution.
Do the same with any prop that is needed for collision, for e.g. if a person is sitting, or there needs to be a floor plane for a skirt to collide with, etc.
I do not recommend use of the Blender export/import preset. It is broken with regard to its rotation and scaling.
Import figure and clothing into Blender, making sure you have Keep Vertex Order turned on.
Select the figure (by right-clicking). Go to the physics tab, which is on the right-hand panel and looks like a check mark to the very far right of the panel. Here you can click the Collision button. This should be all the settings you need. Do the same with any props needed.
Select the clothing by right-clicking. Go to the physics tab again and choose the Cloth button. You can choose one of the cloth presets here such as Cotton or Silk. You should also set the collision distance to minimum possible for both self-collision and collision in the options below. You will have to get a feel for what quality level your machine can handle on these two collision areas as well; higher is better, higher takes longer.
With the clothing still selected, tab into edit mode. At the bottom of the 3D window is a little box with a circle in it when you click on it that you can use to turn on the proportional editing (it's blue now, not orange, but the location is the same):
https://www.blender3darchitect.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/blender3d-furniture-barcelona-chair02.png
Then you can right-click on a vertex and hit G key to drag it around. You want to drag your clothing to where the sim area doesn't clip with the body either, if possible. This can cause errors.
Now you can hit tab to go back to object mode and right click and shift-right click to select clothing and body, and scale them down until they look about right with the scale of the grid squares in blender. Use a round number, because you need to scale back up by this amount before export. I've gotten by without this. Extra big is better for sim than extra small (never try to cloth sim at unmodified Poser scale, for instance).
Now, at the bottom of the screen there should be a timeline. It goes from 1 to 250 by default, but you probably won't need that many frames. It starts calculating when you hit the right-pointing "play" arrow and stops when you hit "pause." How long one or two frames take gives you an idea how long your desired sim may need.
When your sim looks as close as possible to the way you want, pause the sim and export just the clothing to obj again. Now you can import it as a morph using Morph Loader Pro, or just straight-up delete the conformer and replace it with the export (you'll need to re-apply the materials preset if you do that).
My experience is that Blender does not produce a lot of pretty folds at the usual geometry level of most meshes in DS. It produces a better sim but takes longer the more geometry there is. You might try turning up subdiv in DS before export on the clothing if you're willing to just re-import as a solid obj instead of a morph (your pose needs to be considered very final).
Experienced parties feel free to add or correct this info.
Here's what the results of my playing around were...I can still do a few screenies, but SY has pretty much summed up the steps.
A couple of caveats...
Sometimes Blender, for no reason known to humanity, will rename the surfaces on export. If it does this DS may puke on trying to reapply the material preset. If it does, then you either need to reload (if you've deleted the original) and the preset or just (if you haven't) copy each part of the surface and paste it. Usually the renaming is something like shirtsleeve.001. If you are loading as a morph, it doesn't matter.
The Blender export from Studio definitely has orientation problems...Y/Z axis is wrong.
It renames materials if you import something with the same material names as anything that's been imported into the current blend file. So if you import the clothing, delete it, and re-import it, it will rename. Starting a new blend file before re-import will prevent this.
Most clothing sold is not modelled correctly for simulating. Depending on the program you are trying to use, you will need to find unwelded stuff and weld or pin it, or it's just gonna fall to the floor in pieces.
In edit mode you can select geometry. Then go to the vertex group panel on the right, create a new group, and choose "assign." Then you can add that as a rigid group in the Physics panel if you just want to sim a skirt section or the like.
Thanks for the tip. This is true. I'm an amateur 3D artist, a retired computer drafting tech, so I understand modeling takes time to create. Just appears to me, all vendors use standard morphs on content. All a person has to do is visit the gallery, majority of the figure models are standing. All I'm trying to express is, 3D technology has advanced over the years, so content creators should try to advance as well, progress thier skills to the next level, create more morphing options for content.
Example, artist purchase a bed with blanket, sheets, pillows, all props are glued to the bed. Beds are for relaxation/sleeping. V4 lay's her head down on a pillow, shaped as an oval sphere, half her head disappears. Just sayin.
It's not about skills, generally. It's about time spent vs. how much the product can sell for. What I've been trying to get across is that to do this for a living you can only spend a certain amount of time per product, and doing comprehensive morphs to try to imitate draping or gravity takes a long time. Making pillows with head morphs sounds like a great idea until you realize that they can only fit one character head in one pose per morph. If you know the product can't sell for more than $12, you can't afford to spend two weeks doing different pillow and blanket morphs to try to fit different characters.
Many, many thanks for the advice here already. I'm looking forward to playing this weekend. It looks like the job of getting objects into and out of Blender follows the same procedure as for simple morphs. So it is just the draping I need to figure out.
I'm sure I'll still have questions like, for example SY, what is "clipping"? Also, I don't see your screen shots mjc1016 [Edit] - sorry, re-read that, it says "can still do", not "have done".
By the way, I've made the same observation about all the promo shots showing standing poses several times. Of course, that's what eventually prompted this thread. Nothing worse than the "bent tin" look of a skirt in a seated pose.
Hi, thanks for feedback friend. Certainly understand creating/modeling is very time consuming. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy/satisfied with majority of the products I obtain, and some products above my expectations, just a few certain one's are a real pain to work with. If members could contact vendors, like other stores that would be a plus, probably would reduce amount of refunds as well, with simple solutions.
We can PM the vendors if they participate in the forum (most do) but you are right, there should be some form of direct feedback like a "Buyer's Comments" tab on the product page.
If you cannot reach them by PM, you can submit a ticket.
The other thing about many morphs is you are restricted to what the morph provides. I guarantee you that no matter how many morphs a PA provides, people will set up scenes where the morphs are of minimal to no use. However, there are DFormers in Studio that will give you what you need where you need it in many cases. This builds your skills to customize to your particular requirements. DFormers and push modifiers are really great tools.
This is a really good point. I used to use the DForm tool a lot before I got brave and started to use Blender for morphs. I believe it has been developed since then (added weight map tools, etc.??) - is there a tutorial on that too? Also, maybe I misunderstand but I thought the Push Modifier just added a gap between figure and clothing?
Lastly, I've also mentioned this in other posts but multiple collision layers would be good. I want to be able to specify the body and the underclothing as collision surfaces.