Conform coat to Genesis question

Sphinx Magoo

I'm trying to use the M4 Warpmaster set with Genesis (in DS 4.5). The sleeves and main body conform well, but the ends of the long coat look tattered and abused. Is there a way to conform the coat so that this doesn't happen?

Thanks!

Richard Haseltine

The problem is probably that the coat is varying distances from the Genesis mesh, so some parts get adjusted to fit Genesis and some parts get ignored. That will be compounded by similar shifts in weight-projection for the rigging and in morph matching. The fix would be to take the mesh into Hexagon or the like and adjust it to be more uniform, then to edit the weight maps (and morphs) to deal with the projection and matching issues.

Sphinx Magoo

Hmm. Sounds technical. Might there be any tutorials or guides about on how to do this?

Richard Haseltine

Not complete - there was a similar discussion in respect to a set of gloves recently, which had some links.

Sphinx Magoo

Can I clarify something with you, Richard, while I've got your attention?

As I understand it, when conforming an article of clothing to Genesis, the list of clothing types is meant as guideline for what skeleton setup to use. Would that be somewhat correct? There have been times when I've got a helmet or a hat and I'll use the Hair setting simply because it's the only setting I see which seemed appropriate.

I ask because I used the Bodysuit setting with the Warpmaster robe. I'm not sure what else might have been appropriate. Any thoughts?

Tramp Graphics

You don't need to use any of the templates provided in the upper section of the Transfer Utility window. What you use is the "Content type" in the Show Options section of the window. In the case of a helmet this would be Follower Accessory Head. For a coat, it would be Follower Wardrobe Outerwear. But this is really only when rigging an object from scratch, not necessarily conforming an M4/V4 outfit to Genesis. That's done via Reverse source shape from Target.

Bejaymac

Content type is a flag for the CMS, and to allow certain things to show up in some tabs, ie morphs need "modifier shape" otherwise they wont show in the shaping tab.

All of the templates contain the full Genesis skeleton, but they contain different mesh (see pic), each has a basic WM designed for that clothing type, which only exists on areas with mesh. The idea is that you use them on general clothing types to get a basic "rig" that works so-so when fitted to Genesis, you are then meant to give the WM a "cleanup" so it works better with your mesh. The draw-back to this is when you convert more elaborate clothing as the templates weren't designed for that, this is where you need to learn TriAx rigging, as you will have to add bones, adjust face groups and paint weights to get the converted clothing to work properly with Genesis.

Herald of Fire

My only lament is that they didn't add a long skirt autorig option. The closest I could get was using the 'pants' option, but that caused all kinds of other issues. Shame I couldn't find any good tutorials on rigging clothing manually, so right now I'm firing off into the dark.

Pendraia

He could choose to use none but he also could try to use the dress option. As a coat like that has a skirt what is possibly happening is that it is following the legs. A possible work around would be to rename the leg bones as Sickle does in her rigging a skirt tutorial.

I'm not sure if it would work but I think it's worth a try...

Just tried with the V4 version...and I get a lot of crumpling around the bottom of the hem. Had a thought that might work but won't have time to try until later today if at all.

If you convert it with autofit...using the bodysuit template.

Then go to the joint editor tool. Remove the feet and toe bones. Rename the leg bones to rUpperHandle, rLowerHandle and do it for both legs.

This might possible fix the crumpling and distortions. I think some of the distortions may be caused as the skirt is following the legs too closely and as it may be the feet and toe bones that are causing the crumpling at the bottom of the hem to occur but if you remove them it may help.

Richard, what happens to weightmapping that is assigned to a bone that gets removed would it need to be reassigned to the bottom leg bone area?

Richard Haseltine

I think, from memory, that the weights are added to the parent bone's weights - that would certainly be logical since the deleted bone would have moved with its parent.

Pendraia

Richard Haseltine said:

I think, from memory, that the weights are added to the parent bone's weights - that would certainly be logical since the deleted bone would have moved with its parent.

So if you removed the foot and toe bones the area automatically assigned by autofit should revert to the lower leg bone which is what you would want... hopefully I'll get chance to try in the next hour or so.

Pendraia

Pendraia said:

Richard Haseltine said:

I think, from memory, that the weights are added to the parent bone's weights - that would certainly be logical since the deleted bone would have moved with its parent.

So if you removed the foot and toe bones the area automatically assigned by autofit should revert to the lower leg bone which is what you would want... hopefully I'll get chance to try in the next hour or so.

Okay... I did what I suggested and I'm still getting problems around the base. I've noticed when I went into weightmapping that there are lower handles on the original coat and I think they might be what's causing the problems.

I'm going to see whether I can do anything to remove them...

Pendraia

Pendraia said:

Pendraia said:

Richard Haseltine said:

I think, from memory, that the weights are added to the parent bone's weights - that would certainly be logical since the deleted bone would have moved with its parent.

So if you removed the foot and toe bones the area automatically assigned by autofit should revert to the lower leg bone which is what you would want... hopefully I'll get chance to try in the next hour or so.

Okay... I did what I suggested and I'm still getting problems around the base. I've noticed when I went into weightmapping that there are lower handles on the original coat and I think they might be what's causing the problems.

I'm going to see whether I can do anything to remove them...
even removing the handles and reimporting and then tranferring using the transfer utility gives problems around the hem. Looking at it in Hex it seems to have a layer of mesh that is double thickness around the base. I think this may be what's causing the issues.

sparky_1_1bcc1a2f60

For the most part Richard's right, though I use Wings3D rather than Hexagon. Any basic modeling software that import/exports .obj will do. Understand that a coat with tails like that, when auto-conformed, will probably end up with Leg-bones you may not want. If it were me, I'd use my other 3D software to point the tails outward at the hip, Use this object as the original ... then us the original as a morph afterward, locked at 100% to bring the tail back down. You can copy/paste the materials, but you'll lose any morphs the original had ....
Another thing you could try is using the Shirt setting ... hopefully by passing the leg bones ....