In October 2017 I started to use dForce. I shared my first tutorial, thinking it was a one-time effort, but then I kept discovering new things and this thread is the result. The tutorials are accessible within this thread as well as in downloadable PDF files and videos in the Daz store. I hope these help you learn how to better use dForce.

TUTORIALS IN PDF FORMAT

This collection of tutorials is available in PDF format. It is now split into parts as it was too large to upload to the forum.

     Part 1 - Sections   1 to 25  -  91 pages

     Part 2 - Sections 26 to 50  -  94 pages    

     Part 3 - Sections 51 to 75  -  92 pages       

TUTORIALS IN VIDEO FORMAT

In late 2018 Digital Art Live invited me to do a dForce webinar and since then two more. Videos from these webinars are available in the Daz store. Although many of the examples are similar to what's been posted here, there are documents and examples exclusive to the videos. These will be helpful for those who learn better by seeing than just reading.

     Video 1: Powerful dForce Discoveries and Solutions

     Video 2: New dForce Discoveries

     Video 3: dForce Tutorial Set : Fantastic Voyage!

ACCESSING THE ONLINE TUTORIALS

     Table of Content (sequential listing of tutorials as they were published)

     Subject Index (found in next post)

• Using dForce to Create Objects or Effects
• Creating/Using Clothing
• Simulation Parameters & Tools
• Weight Nodes and Map
• Surface Properties
• Helper Objects
• dForce Add-on Modifier
• UI Tips
• Other Daz Studio Tools

Table of Content

1. Creating and Draping a Blanket Over a Figure
2. dForce Global Environment and Duration Settings (Gravity, Air Resistance, Stabilization Time, Negative Air Resistance)
3. Cast Off Blanket
4. Adding a Smoothing Modifier
5. Using dForce Surface Smoothing Settings (Velocity Smoothing and Velocity Smoothing Iterations)
6.  Draping Clothes on Furniture
7. Friction
8. Creating a Clothes Pile
9. Various Methods to Correct Poke Through (including Push Modifiers)
10. Getting a Figure’s Head to Sink into a Pillow
11. Hanging Towel (introduces use of dForce influence weight map)
12. Wind Node
13. dForce Surface Parameter Tests
14. Creating a Foot Stool
15. Animated Posing for the Foot Stool
16. Head Scarf and Telephone Wires
17. Creating Blowing Curtains
18. Creating a Tablecloth and Napkin
19. Exploring Influence Weight Maps
20. Short-cut Key to Clear Simulation on Selected Item(s)
21. Dropped Papers
22. Banner Flag
23. Effect of Surface Properties Using Simple Sheet Drop - Part 1
24. Effect of Surface Properties Using Simple Sheet Drop – Part 2
25. Effect of Surface Properties Using dForce Primitive Flag Test
26. Dropping an Object onto a Surface
27. Creating a Kite from Primitives  - Part 1   Part 2
28. Creating a Bag of Fruit
29. Deflated Soccer Ball
30. Explorations of a Half Sphere
31. Creating a Round Floor Cushion with Negative Gravity
32. Footsteps in the Snow, Sand, or Mud
33. More Footprints
34. Sand Trap (footprints)
35. Creating Icicles
36. Creating a Cape
37. Mummy Wrappings
38. Create a Skirt from a Cone
39. Create a Bandeau from a Cylinder
40. Create a Dress with Gathered Waist
41. How Resolution Affects Simulation Results
42. Using Silo 2.5 to Create a Shirt
43. Another Shirt Made with Silo
44. Flying Cape
45. Cylinder Helpers - Creating a Shawl
46. Cylinder Helpers - Part 2
47. Spherical Helper - Pulling a Cloth through a Ring
48. Cylinder Rigidity
49. Rotating Cylinder Helper - Wrap Up a Rope
50. Creating a Necklace     Creating a V in the Necklace Chain
51. Dog Leash
52. Effect of Density on Rotating and Horizontal Ropes
53. Effect of Density on a Rotating Cloth
54. Tie a String
55. Using a Dynamic Surface Add-on
56. Finding Vertex Coordinates within Daz Studio
57. Button and Collar Add-ons
58. Creating a Seat Belt
59. Polyline Add-On
60. Script to Quickly Add Dynamic Modifier to an Object
61. dForce Menu Addition   (Updated Version)
62. More About Pillows
63. Momentum Transfer
64. Chair Cushions
65. Men's Underwear
66. Shorts and Swim Trunks
67. More Momentum Transfer
68. Loose and Rumpled Clothing
69. dForce Magnets
70. Making Caves
71. Fantastic Voyage: Making Artery and Blood Cells
72. Skin Indentation
73. Blindfold
74. Making a Breast Helper for Clothing
75. Skin Indentation: Punch to Face
76. Socks
77. Puffy Sleeves
78. Creating Mountains
79. Creating Rocks
80. Adding Wrinkles to Couch Cushions
81. Plowed Field
82. dForce Companion
83. Making a Sash for a Dress
84. The Problem with Buttons
85. Sphere to Shirt
86. Making Waves
87.  Another Look at Waves
88. Making Waves 3 - Rings
89. Making Mountains 2
90. Rigid Follow Nodes
91. Cling Wrap
92. Putting Goggle Straps On Over Hair
93. Putting a Hat Over Hair
94. Creating and Using a Face Mask
95. New!  A Veil Covering the Face and Hair

It's in the title did you try :

either https://www.daz3d.com/sixus1-mentoring-witchery-pt1-tandem-morph-creation

or https://www.daz3d.com/sixus1-mentoring-witchery-pt2-fibermesh-hair-creation ?

I wishlisted both but would like to know what you think about it.

How long are the videos for example?

Thank you.

WOW Varsel you just upped the ante 

I am afraid I will not be getting around to this again, still stressful work issues and waiting for my transfer

my life on pause at the moment

I also haven't used Monique 6 or 7 enough, at least from the shape/morph perspective. I get more mileage out of facial morphs, in general, rather than specific characters.

If I buy Monique 8 (and who am I kidding? I'll buy her), it'll be first for the skin texture. I preferred the Genesis 2 versions over Genesis 3, to be honest... between IG's Iray settings and my own preferences in Iray settings.

As for messing up skin textures? It varies so much between artists. Every artist seems to have a different set of translucency settings (which I think causes a lot of the orange skin), and that's why I pretty much always pick up the Beautful Skin product from Sickleyield & Fuseling (although others might recommend other solutions). The main reason is to even out the skin settings across the different artists' preferred settings.

Finally got my entry ready, and it was not easy. 

Time for Trick or Treat

Tommie and Kageto, and their respective siblings, areheading  out Trick or Treating, but Tommie seems more interested in admiring Kageto's costume than actually Trick or Treating. 

Tommie (Scarecrow)

Kageto (Warrior)

Kiriko (Kitsune)

Keiji (Tengu)

Jesse (Wizard)

Die_trying's V4 morphs for Genesis (Tommie, Kageto)*
Pin-up Girl Pack (Tommie)*
Ghastly's General Purpose Anime Team Morphs ( Kageto)*
Ultimate Shader Pack (Chrome shaders—with reflection maps removed—for Tommie's wristwatch and necklace)*
Ella V4 (Tommie's eyes)*
Sandra for V4* (Tommie's skin)*

Akina for A4 (Kiriko)*

Findlay for Genesis (Jesse)*

Mifuyu Hair (Kiriko)*

Satin shaders (Kiriko's and Keiji's costumes, Jesse's sash)*
Super Shine Shader pack (Kageto's, cyberarms)*

HFS EVAN Expansion set (Kageto's cyberarms)*

Two items from Hisayan Image Labs (clothes converted to fit Genesis):
4th down: Kozure_Okami for M3—[converted to fit manually in Hexagon] (Keiji's Hakama)
5th down: Yagyu for M4—[fit via Transfer Utility] (Kageto's kimono, obi, and Tabi)

Geta and Seta for Genesis2M (Keiji)*

Witch Hat (Jesse's hat)

M4H4 Sickle Trench Coat (Jesse's coat)*

Angel Wings (Keiji)

Halloween bag:  (Tommie, Kageto, Keiji, Kiriko, Jesse)*

Dystopia City Blocks 11-20 (sky,road)

Cosplay Costume 7 (Kiriko's costume)*

Foxy Sorceress (Kiriko,s tail and "fox ears")*

Halloween House (haunted house)*

Elven Trench for Mr Trenchcoat (Jesse)*

Building Set 01: (sidewalk and lawn)*

Impractical Rogue for Genesis (Kageto)*

Shamisen (Kiriko)*

Paid For Items

Ryuu International (Kageto, Keiji)
Willow for Genesis 2 Female (Tommie)

Buccaneer Basic for Genesis (Kageto)
No Count Items

Ramwolf's Genesis Morphs (all figures)

Genesis Evolution Head and Body Morphs (all figures)

Journeyer Scout Outfit (Jesse's boots, pants, shirt and sash)

Wildmane Hair (Jesse)

Sallie Mae Hair (Tommie)

Genesis Scarecrow outfit by Dragonbreath (Tommie)

This image has been resized to fit in the page. Click to enlarge.

So here's a Victoria 8 and Iray conversion of Enchanted Dreams, with a morph conversion of G1's Mina morph for the face.  Boss Pro Light Set.

Note that the skirt had to be loaded without the autofit, then parented in place.  When I tried auto fit, somehow it connected to the movement of her arms, and warped.

I used Allen Art's free gemstone materials - they really are beautiful. 

Well then, it boils down to what you personally like.  With a nearly 50 year history, she's been drawn "just about every which way".  The only thing I might recommend are upswept, almond shaped eyes (thus hinting at a predatory animal) accented with thick border of "goth" eyeliner and mascera.  The atrist who drew her most for the original Warren Magazin run, Jose Gonzalez, usually gave her a "triangular" face, her high cheekbones leading to a delicate chin.

I hope you don't mind a personal example.  Here's what I did using Aiko 3 with Thorne & Sarsa's "Mila" morph enhanced by various dials from Beth Capsces' "Kioki for A3" set.  the "bikini" is actually a texture using transparency and displacement maps made by sam Therapy.

Sincerely,

Bill

I have these two products. Is it possible to make them work on a Genesis 8 characters? 

https://www.daz3d.com/sporty-ponytail-hair-and-oot-hairblending-2-0-for-genesis-3-female-s

https://www.daz3d.com/everyday-updo-hair-and-oot-hairblending-2-0-for-genesis-3-female-s

They seem to lose all the morph presets?

Thank you for any advice.

Assuming you have the correct licenses you'd probably want to do soemthing fairly simple like use a modeller or UV editor to move entire blocks around (say scale to 33% centred on the origin and then move by 33% or 66% to arange them in a single square), then you coudl do the same to the textures in an image editor to make a combined map that would fit. More elaborate schemes might be more efficient, but woudl be fiddlier. A complete remap loaded as a UV set and then using Map Transfer to covnert the maps would be more awkward.

Hi Mat :)

the process of attaching rigging to a mesh in every program i've used,. creates an "area of influence" (for the mesh defomation) ,.around the bones,. automagically..

if the user then want's to re-define, or adjust those weights,.(by manually weight painting) ... that is optional..

Carrara does a pretty decent job of creating the mesh weights based on the bones. but those can be adjusted or changed easily (using Bone influence slider controls,.. or painting by hand) in the weightpainting area.

As for an established system,. 

Ideally,. you'd make the mesh for your figure,. then add bones to allow deformation of the mesh,. then attach those bones to the mesh.

whether you do the bones in Carrara, Poser, or even daz studio would depend on the intended use for that model,. EG: personal use, limited use EG: a single animation project

, for commercial profit, (mass retail) etc

In carrara,. you could simply make a mesh,. export it as an OBJ,. and use Poser or Daz Studio to "Transfer" the rigging from an existing figure (eg Victoria/Michael/Genesis) onto your imported OBJ mesh from carrara.  ...this is ideal for creating clothing "figures" for Genesis etc..

(note) this will automagicallly create weights for your mesh based on the bones.

In Daz Studio,. there's a function called "Transfer Utility" under Assets,. which allows the user to select a "Source" figure, and "Target" mesh, and auto transfers the rigging and creates weights from that rigging to fit the mesh.

Hope it helps :)

GenX is for transferrign morphs, Michael 4 as Michael 4 is the base shape so there's nothing for GenX to transfer (also I don't think GenX supports Genesis 8)

I just installed the update. While the MFD seems to fit Olympia 8 without any pokethru now, is the overskirt meant to do this? Huge pokethru at back and thigh, and it gapes at the waist. I looked for a morph called "fit dress" or something like that, but there's nothing of that ilk. 

 

Setting the overskirt to collide with the MFD should work. You'll still get a minor poke near her butt but that is easily fixed by increasing the smoothing and/or colision iterations a little bit.

Hey, at least the overskirt looks fine with Olympia 8. It still has issues with small bodies like Moxie and the extra small ones like Faye and Young Lyra.

I just installed the update. While the MFD seems to fit Olympia 8 without any pokethru now, is the overskirt meant to do this? Huge pokethru at back and thigh, and it gapes at the waist. I looked for a morph called "fit dress" or something like that, but there's nothing of that ilk. 

I know that I've had to drastically change my iray lighting when using the 8 line with the 8 skins. Using G3 skins on the 8 figures, no problems. But use the G8 skins.....hoooo boy. It's no secret that Olympia 7 is my all time favourite G3 character, with Monique 7 coming an extremely close second. I was devastated when I bought Olympia 8 to see her skin - I have one iray light setup that stops the orange of her skin. Just one. I am REALLY worried about Monique 8 - while her morphs will work well in my library, I am pretty much biting my nails in anxiety over what her skin will be like. And her eyes. Honestly, I am not happy at all with the G8 skins. The figures/morphs, they are fine. But the skins.......ugh. Half of me is THRILLED to see Monique 8 coming out shortly - the other half is curled up in a ball, sucking my thumb in terror at what she will look like.  

 

I'm with you, mate. Monique and Darius have been great skins for both G2 and G3 (though so distinctive that they look like their namesakes regardless of the morph); so, it would be sad if they wax them up. I want Daz to promote whoever is making the Genesis 8 shader settings to a position where they no longer set those parameters. Even joelegecko can't make them look good.

I want to create a Shaping morph for Genesis 8 that will turn him into M4. I watched a couple of videos on youtube and I ended up with a few questions. In the video (that was for GenX), he located M4 and then drug him over to the GenX panel. Then he located the body morphs (not sure if you have to do the head morphs too?) and drug them over. Then he located the figure he wanted create a morph for (I think it was a special character for V4). Then he did the transfer. I think that it transferred the figure Elaine over to Genesis.

But I'm not sure. I've never had to load the morphs for M4 before. I just click on the icon and he loads into the scene, with the morphs I presume. So do I have to copy the morphs over to the GenX2 panel?

And if I decide to do other characters that are based on M4...like the elite characters, do you have to drag M4 over to the GenX2 panel every time?

And how did it know that the figure was being transferred to to Genesis. (I was thinking that it was transferring the morphs from V4.2 over to Elaine, but Elaine was the figure he ended up with. So the morhps just needed to be there to make the Elaine character, I think.

And do you have to do anything special, if your content was all installed with connect? I thought I saw somewhere where someone said that you had to do something with the directories.

Thanks.

There can be no doubt with this one. I'm kinda surprised that it's so exact. Not complaining though.

I present to you Jared Padalecki aka Sam Winchester:
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/phx-sean-for-michael-8/123391/

I wonder if Jensen/Dean is on the way (not counting earlier generation figures), maybe Misha/Castiel too? I hope so.

Whoa! Phoenix1966 pretty much nailed him! Most impressive!

Thanks, folks. If you look at the last promo image, you catch a glimpse of the next two in the unofficial series.

Awesome! I'm so glad to see you doing characters for Genesis 8! :D

Thanks. 

Coming back at this point, it made sense to move forward with the most recent incarnation of figures. I have to admit I do like the Iray render engine quite a bit in Daz Studio, too.

Sean's skin texture looks amazing as does the morph. I've only made two purchase from Rendo but dang you make it tempting! lol I hope we see more of your new work here at Daz as well. :) 

Wecome Back! 

Thanks so much!

Sean's got some handy fibermesh options, too. Expect to find the rest of the "family" over there and original characters here. 

There can be no doubt with this one. I'm kinda surprised that it's so exact. Not complaining though.

I present to you Jared Padalecki aka Sam Winchester:
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/phx-sean-for-michael-8/123391/

I wonder if Jensen/Dean is on the way (not counting earlier generation figures), maybe Misha/Castiel too? I hope so.

Whoa! Phoenix1966 pretty much nailed him! Most impressive!

Thanks, folks. If you look at the last promo image, you catch a glimpse of the next two in the unofficial series.

Awesome! I'm so glad to see you doing characters for Genesis 8! :D

Thanks. 

Coming back at this point, it made sense to move forward with the most recent incarnation of figures. I have to admit I do like the Iray render engine quite a bit in Daz Studio, too.

Sean's skin texture looks amazing as does the morph. I've only made two purchase from Rendo but dang you make it tempting! lol I hope we see more of your new work here at Daz as well. :) 

Wecome Back! 

You will have to find the characters that have individual make up parts - lips, eye make up, etc.  There are more than you might think, but a lot of the earlier stuff, like Richard said, are a whole new face, this is usually found most often in V4 and Genesis.  Of course, you could just transfer the whole skin over for the make up you want to use- I.e move Elizabeth's skin to Victoria if you really want to use the make up

Had some fun with Lucas 8, a dash of M8 and some morph packages. Than continued the fun with postwork in Topaz Studio (the free version). This be the result, posting two of the pictures I ended up doing.

Male model -1 Topaz 1 and 2

 

 

That looks really good! I particularly like the bottom one! :)

Ok, this might be noob question, but do i need anything else to transfer 4v, g2 and g3 skins to g8 than uv maps. I haven't tried transfering surfases maps before and there is so many beautiful characters i would like to try.

To transfer maps between generations you'll likely need products by Cayman Studios: https://www.daz3d.com/cayman-studios

He also has some at the other store, Renderosity.

I really like the products, I have three of them. I have the "Genesis 3 UVs for Genesis 2 Female", "Legacy UVs for Genesis 3: V4", and "Legacy UVs for Genesis 3: G2F". I kind of wish I had held off on the G3F ones though, as I'm mainly using G8F now.