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Just speculating here, but it might be worth playing with the expand/contract dial under the dforce surface settings, maybe dial to 105% or 110% and see what happens. I personally would have tried to plant the wind node on the figure's lower back and parent to lower abdomen or equivalent bone for an animated drape, but I don't have much experience working with wind, so this is just spitballing.
Well part of what I think aggravates so many content creators is that for each pose there is an art to making the morphs for the conforming cloth look as dynamic as possible. If my figure is in a standing pose the created morphs, using the sym, looks good but you pose him in another pose and the cape does strange things like the area I have set up to NOT move away from the figure DOES move away from the figure (talking about the fasteners and the top of the cape I have set up to be less affected by the drape sym). So now I get why some published artists include support for some pose packs as they just sym the cloth and save that out as a morph target that correlates with the figures pose, but trust me, it won't look good if you try that pose preset for the clothing with another pose, it just won't look good. So a cape that looks realistic will HAVE to be sym'd in order to get it looking just right but figuring out the wind nodes to get the effects I want is kind of a nose bleed! lol
EDITED to fix some sentence structuring and info!
I love this thread.
I've been looking at Silo 2, as it's one of the cheapest modellers that is avaliable (at just under £80). But I'm worried that I won't be any good at using it.
I have also wanted to make clothes for a while, but I've not been inspired, I've got no idea where to start, and very little confidence in my own ability.
But thanks to this thread, I finally have a starting point.
Thanks for uploading your tutorials as PDFs too.
Hexagon 2.5 is free, and they're actually working on it. :) I know, it does crash a bit, and I don't know what advantages Silo has over Hexagon (though not unlike Daz Studio, Hex actually does more than people think, it just doesn't have great documentation) But I thought I'd point it out. :)
I got Hex a while ago as a cheap purchase via the Platinum club, and I've been fairly successful with making clothes with it, especially stuff that's suitable for dForce. I'd show a render of my latest, but haven't rendered it yet, so this is an older dress that predates Dforce, but still draped beautifully (especially as I jumped it from Genesis to Genesis 3)
That is both a beautiful dress and render.
I do have Hexagon. But I see the things that other people do with the likes of Marvelous Designer, Zbrush and Silo, and think that there's better out there.
To be honest, your dress is the best item of clothing that I've seen, which has been made in Hexagon. So you've given me inspiration to persevere with the program.
Plus, I've only been making props. I just can't seem to work out which shapes to use for making clothing.
This is from the Cone skirt tutorial.
I assume I go into the dForce Simulation Settings menu and select dForce --> Add dForce Modifier: Dynamic Surface
Do I add it to the whole cone, or just the belt?
And I can't find the Contraction-Expansion ratio either.
Thanks for any help.
f. Apply a dForce dynamic modifier to the cone.
g. Select the Belt surface and set Contraction-Expansion Ratio to 62%.
This is from the Cone skirt tutorial.
I assume I go into the dForce Simulation Settings menu and select dForce --> Add dForce Modifier: Dynamic Surface YES
Do I add it to the whole cone, or just the belt? It will be added to the entire cone (belt and dress) IF you created the belt surface before adding the dForce modifier. If you create a new surface after adding the dForce modifier, you'll need to add it again.
And I can't find the Contraction-Expansion ratio either. Go to the Surfaces pane and expand the surface hierarchy until you see the subsection labeled Simulation. You'll find Contraction-Expansion there just below Density. Each surface has a Simulation subsection, so you can modify the settings surface by surface.
Thanks for any help.
The early sections of this thread had more details and screen shots of the various menu actions and how to find them. In later sections I simplified on the most common actions.
Glad you like the thread!
I got Silo 2.5 on Steam when it was on sale for a lot less than the current sales price. Not sure how often it drops lower.
I use cylanders a lot. Small ones, with lots of edge extruding and moving vertexes around. :) I also tend to go a while between finishing clothing items, so the outfit I made recently is like the ... 4th thing I've done that I've been happy with completing. However, I am aware that some store vendors use Hexagon for modeling their clothes (Or at least did. The only one I knew for certain was Will DuPree, and he retired sometime around Genesis I think) So it's not like it's only for beginners/hobbist.
I only brought up Hexagon because it's free, and while buggy it is a decent program once you learn its quirks, and one thing I have learned is that besides the specifics of where various controls are and what they're called, most of the basic modeling techniques used in any given tutorial can be cross applied no matter what progam you're using.
@RAMWolff I finally had a chance to take a look at a cape. I wouldn't say the result shows it spreading out as it goes back but it's also not clumping together.
44. Flying Cape.The cape is just a primitive plane stuck into the neck just above the shoulders. A dynamic dForce modifier was added. To finish this off, I would add a positive and negative push modifier to get the cape to sit on the shoulders. There are two surfaces created using the geometry editor: a thin strip at the shoulders and then the bulk of the cape.
Settings were:
Two renders, the first with the body and clothing hidden during the simulation, the second with them visible. The body does block the wind so you get a more turbulent result.
Body Hidden during simulation:
Body showing during simulation:
EDIT: Below is a screen capture of the wind node.I also did an animated simulation. The uptick at the end in the first render above (body hidden) kept moving back and at 40 frames got it that position, I think 45-50 would likely have it disappear but I didn't run it that long.
EDIT 2: See update where using low denisty values alone gave good results.
Thanks so much! :-)
Thank for your reply and patience. I've not used dForce very often, let alone to create any clothing with.
I've created the skirt and, I'm trying to save it as a prop asset, but Daz keeps crashing. I've made a thread about it, but I don't think there's a solution. I've also created my first material texture for it using GIMP. I haven't had a chance to render it, as I've been trying to make the bandeau top, but it keeps bunching up (or imploding slightly) at the back (I've attached a couple of screenshots).
You must have a lot of patience.
I'm one of those people that like to dive-in head first. I want to start creating right away. But, when I mess up, I take it pretty hard (and normally have to start all over again).
Hexagon is a great program. Although there are times when it has driven me mad.
I've made a few props with it, but not clothes. At the moment, I'm trying to find out how to make trousers/pants. At some point, I'd like to try and make my own male content.
It looks like part of the bandeau may be intersecting the skin at the start (or during animation) and so is getting locked into place. To test if that's the case, increase the Z or X scale a bit to be sure all is clearing the skin. If that's not a problem, you can try a lower Dynamic Strength (like 0.95 or 0.97) on the middle band material.
Rich, I have a question. I was browsing through the store and happened on a product that used primitives to control the movement of (mostly) fabrics, but is this something that dforce could do? Like use the primitive to shape the fabric then remove it after the sim? Or the very least make it invisible? What do you think?
https://www.daz3d.com/controllable-dynamic-shapes
I don't have any experience with the primitives in that set, but I use normal primitives quite often to push things around when dForcing stuff. As this set is not too cheap, you might want to play around with the built in primitives a bit to see if You can achieve what you intend with them.
I own an Optitex dynamic cloak from the same PAs that worked on the same principle: "Cloth" loops modelled into the fabric, elongated toroid helper props that you were supposed to position inside the loops and then move during animated drape (or parent to the figure's hands, after using a starter pose that would reposition the arms and hands to a place that wouldn't make the cloak freak out when it simulated.) When it worked, it was the most awesome thing ever, but you had to get the helper props positioned *just* so, or they wouldn't hold onto the fabric loops properly.
I wasn't going to buy the set (yikes), but was wondering if it could be done in dforce.
I don't have any modeling knowledge, so I wouldn't be able to model things into the fabric. I just thought I could add a torus and figure out how to make the 'cloth' drape through it. Way beyond my skill set. That's why I was wondering if it's doable or not. I have some Optitex stuff, but not the cloak.
Concerning that set there is this notation on it This product is currently incompatible with DAZ Studio 4.6 and up.
Another reason not to buy it....other than the price. Thanks, I didn't see that.
Dforce really doesn't like things poking directly through (intersecting with) the mesh of the dynamic object (as opposed to things touching the dynamic object and letting the dynamic object drape around the static one). Taking a static prop that's just kind of touching the dynamic object at the start of an animated sequence and then moving the static prop to a different position so that the dynamic object follows it...that should be doable. I'm just skeptical about how well it would work with the static object intersecting the dynamic mesh.
Funny you should ask. About a week and a half ago I started playing around with helper primitives. The thought was you could use animated primitive(s) to move fabric around during the simulation, and then hide them at the end. It worked but I haven't had time to properly document it for a tutorial yet. In the meantime, here's a couple of screen shots and a render to show what's possible.
45. Cylinder Helpers. These are primitives used to move fabric around. Part of the fabric is embedded in an animated primitive and moves with along with it. Start with a primitive plane with two primitive cylinders positioned at either end. The plane has a dForce modifier added, the cylinders do not. The cylinders are animated, the plane is not - it follows along as the ends are stuck to the cylinders.
Frame 0: Frame 4: Frame 8:
Frame 12: Frame 16: Frame 20:
Finished Render:
EDIT: I rearranged the original to put it in a format more consistent with previous topics.
Great "tutorial"
Just want to add, that
a) the two "control" cylinders are only interjecting with the plane and are in no way physically connected to it. DForce makes the plane "stick" to them
b) to change the flow of the plane you can use a different scales and angles for the cylinders during parts of the "animation" and/or different properties for the plane (set in the "simulation" part of the surface tab).
@RGcincy "the plane is not but follows along as the ends are stuck to the cylinders"
@maikdecker "DForce makes the plane "stick" to them"
Wait a sec. How do you do that, or does dForce do it "automagically"?
Wow awesome, I would not have thought that possible!
Good clarification! The cylinders are just there, sitting with the ends of the plane stuck into them. The plane is not parented to the cylinders. As you move the cylinder, the plane will follow along because its end is stuck inside. The movement will cause air effects to be applied to the plane even thought there is no wind node. Gravity is also being applied at the same time, so the speed the cylinders move affect the result.
dForce just does it. It is a benefit and a curse. The curse comes if you have a part of clothing embedded inside a figure at frame 0, that part gets stuck and you'll get funny draping.
I wasn't sure it would work when I first tried it. It would be nice if you could somehow "release" the effect of the cylinder near the end of the simulation so gravity could affect the final positioning.
46. Cylinder Helpers - Part 2. This illustrates how embedding the end of a plane into a cylinder results in the plane following the animated primitive. In the illustration below, one plane is embedded while the other is not.
Animation setup Frame 0: Animation setup Frame 20:
Simulation Frame 0: Simulation Frame 4:
Simulation Frame 16: Simulation Frame 20:
As you can see, the non embedded plane is left behind while the embedded plane moves and experiences some distortion from the movement.
In the following image, the front plane was just barely inside the cylinder. This shows you don't need to fully embed it to get the result. Since less is in the cylinder, you get slightly different draping.
EDIT: Original text slightly modified to follow the format used on previous sections.
Well, you can setup a custom animation range for an animated simulation...maybe set the cylinders' final position at frame 25, simulate frames 1-25, then hide the cylinders and simulate 26-30? Or is it just going to freak out and try to resimulate from scratch on frame 26-30, and lose all the work you've already done?
It freaks out.
You could animate to the end, hide the cylinders and export the plane as an object, then reimport as a morph and simulate from there. A bit of work though.
Rich....what are the odds that you've been working on this at the same time I saw a version of it in the store? So it appears that it is doable then. Great news!
One of those coinicidences that also show no idea is unique!
I'm not sure if the idea of torus-like helper props that are shown in the product you reference work in dForce..From the few promo images I can't tell how they are suppose to function.
47. Sphere Helper. I took a look at a using a sphere to move a cloth into a torus and then draping it down. I wouldn't call the torus a helper as it's the sphere that is doing the work. The result is like a washcloth hanging from a circular towel rack.
Frame 0:
Frame 4: Frame 10:
Frame 16: Frame 20:
Frame 24: Frame 30:
Render: