How to Use dForce: Creating a Blanket, Draping Clothes on Furniture, and Much More [Commercial]

barbult

Mada said:

I will try to do the tutorial right after my deadline is done, should be by Wednesday if all goes well - it takes a bit of setting up the microphone and working out how to show the different things and making sure I don't skip over something that I take for granted... people get annoyed by video tutorials really easy lol

@Mada, are you still planning this tutorial? I've learned a lot already from what you have posted. I bought House Brownie as a show of support for your contributions and to see the vertex positioning that you described above. Following your hints above, I was able to create a dynamic surface add on to hold a shirt closed at a button position, but I found modifying the vertex positions in Blender to be cumbersome. (I don't know much about Blender.)  I'm still eager to watch your tutorial on the subject.

In this image added dForce to the Jeans and Button Up shirt and I created a dynamic surface add on near the top button. I turned off visibility of the other buttons, because they would be on the wrong side for a man's shirt. They look OK when the shirt is closed, but not when it is open. 

This is my House Brownie image, added here just for fun.

Mada

Hi yes I'm still planning to do them - real life intervened with plumber problems which took up my free time this week. If you select the vertex points on a copy of the shirt and bridge between them and then delete the rest so you're only left with the new bridged mesh that will give you exact points - I found that the easiest way to do it :)
 

Images look great - that worked well

barbult

Mada said:

Hi yes I'm still planning to do them - real life intervened with plumber problems which took up my free time this week. If you select the vertex points on a copy of the shirt and bridge between them and then delete the rest so you're only left with the new bridged mesh that will give you exact points - I found that the easiest way to do it :)
 

Images look great - that worked well

Oh, that sounds clever! I'll have to figure out how to do that. Thanks for the tip.

dracorn

First Time Using dForce - Ran into a Problem

I am using dForce Master Cloth Presets.  Here are my steps.

1. Copied out my character, outfit and the chair into a new scene.

2. Selected the dress and applied the dForce modifier.

3. Applied the preset for tight dress.

4. Clicked the Simulate button.

ERROR Message: Could not find a valid OpenCL Device.

What am I doing wrong?

RGcincy

I think dForce needs OpenCL to be loaded on your computer. Looks like it’s either missing or not being found. I don’t have access to my pc right now but search Google using terms dForce open CL site:daz3d.com/forum as I recall the question being asked before.

barbult

@dracorn Do you have an Nvidia graphics card? If so, have you selected it in the Simulation Settings pane in the Advanced tab as the OpenCL Device?

dracorn

barbult said:

@dracorn Do you have an Nvidia graphics card? If so, have you selected it in the Simulation Settings pane in the Advanced tab as the OpenCL Device?

I do have an Nvidia graphics card, a GTX 980ti in fact.  However, for some reason, Daz Studio's Simulation Settings tab is not seeing it.  In the Advanced tab, it states: "A valid OpenCL 1.2 device could not be found. Simulation using the dForce enging is not available."

I looked in my Render Settings tab, Advanced, and see under Hardware, Photoreal Devices that both CPU and GeForce CTX 980 Ti are checked. 

What do I do to get D/S Simulation Settings to recognize by Nvidia card?

barbult

@Mada, I'm making progress in understanding how to bridge vertex points. At first I thought I had to select two vertices and bridge them into a line. Then repeat that, and then select the two lines and bridge them into a polygon. Later I realized that I can just select the 4 vertices at once and bridge them directly to a polygon. I took on the challenge of the Country Girl Dress, because those lace panels on the side are not welded. I made two add on polygons at the top of each lace panel.

Your help in understanding this has been invaluable!! Thank you so much.

 

barbult

@dracorn Do you have an Nvidia graphics card? If so, have you selected it in the Simulation Settings pane in the Advanced tab as the OpenCL Device?

dracorn said:

I do have an Nvidia graphics card, a GTX 980ti in fact.  However, for some reason, Daz Studio's Simulation Settings tab is not seeing it.  In the Advanced tab, it states: "A valid OpenCL 1.2 device could not be found. Simulation using the dForce enging is not available."

I looked in my Render Settings tab, Advanced, and see under Hardware, Photoreal Devices that both CPU and GeForce CTX 980 Ti are checked. 

What do I do to get D/S Simulation Settings to recognize by Nvidia card?

Is your Nvidia graphics driver up to date? Did Windows update overwrite the "good" Nvidia driver with one from Microsoft? Try installing the latest driver directly from Nvidia. I am also using a GTX 980Ti. I have Nvidia driver 398.36.

Mada

Ha - that works really well and exactly the right use for it :) Glad to hear I helped, I wish I had more time to do video tutorials but income is first priority and there's not enough hours in my days - lucky I love what I do!

dracorn

That was it, barbult - my drivers were out of date.  D/S is currently compiling my dForce Kernals... whatever that means.  

dracorn

Well - dForce is working, but it looks like her outfit is exploding.

dracorn

I was using Bast outfit.  So I think I will hide it's skirt and substitute another one and apply dForce to that.  I don't have a dForce dress, but I do have a V4 dynamic outfit - Angeloi.  I've heard that dynamic Poser outfits usually work with dForce.  

barbult

There is a free dForce outfit in Genesis 8 Starter Essentials. Try that to get started. Go back now and study this thread from the beginning. Look for Mada's video tutorials at YouTube.

sapat

Mada said:

Ha - that works really well and exactly the right use for it :) Glad to hear I helped, I wish I had more time to do video tutorials but income is first priority and there's not enough hours in my days - lucky I love what I do!

You could always make a clothing tutorial with these kinds of helpful things and pitch it to Daz.  That way you can help us, but still have an income! 

dracorn

barbult said:

There is a free dForce outfit in Genesis 8 Starter Essentials. Try that to get started. Go back now and study this thread from the beginning. Look for Mada's video tutorials at YouTube.

Thanks!  I will.

barbult

dracorn said:

barbult said:

There is a free dForce outfit in Genesis 8 Starter Essentials. Try that to get started. Go back now and study this thread from the beginning. Look for Mada's video tutorials at YouTube.

Thanks!  I will.

Oops. The free dForce Bardot outfit is in dForce Starter Essentials. dForce Starter Essentials is part of the free Daz Studio 4.10 product, just like Genesis 8 Starter Essentials, but is a separate item in the bundle. I hope I didn't confuse you.

barbult

@Mada, I'm back to pester you again! I have a question about dForce House Brownie Outfit for Genesis 8 Male(s). The pants, socks, and shoes autofit to G8F fine, but when double clicked the shirt thumbnail with G8F selected, it loaded in the scene parented to G8F, but the Autofit dialog didn't come up. It is not "Fit to" G8F either. Do you know why that would happen?

I was able to select the shirt in the Scene pane and select Fit to from the Parameters pane, though. Then I got the autofit dialog. I selected Genesis 8 male and Full Body for autofit. I set the smoothing to Generic and simulated. The dynamic surface addons are not working; the shirt fell open. I wonder if that is a shortcoming of autofit. Maybe it doesn't move the addon vertices to the right place to match the shirt.

Then I tried a new experiment. I dialed in the hidden Genesis 8 Male dial in Genesis 8 Female. I fit the shirt to her with autofit Unsupported and None. The shirt got huge and lumpy. I dialed the hidden Genesis 8 Male morph out of the shirt. Then I dialed the hidden Genesis 8 male morph out of G8F. I set smoothing to Generic and simulated. That process made the dynamic surface addons work. There is a little poke through in the breast that can easily be fixed.

RGcincy

barbult said:

@Mada, I'm making progress in understanding how to bridge vertex points. At first I thought I had to select two vertices and bridge them into a line. Then repeat that, and then select the two lines and bridge them into a polygon. Later I realized that I can just select the 4 vertices at once and bridge them directly to a polygon. I took on the challenge of the Country Girl Dress, because those lace panels on the side are not welded. I made two add on polygons at the top of each lace panel.

Your help in understanding this has been invaluable!! Thank you so much.

Excellent barbult! What program are you using to make the add on polygons?  

And thanks for answering questions too. I was out of town the past week so had limited internet access and no computer available. Appreciate your contributions.

barbult

I used Blender. Select two vertices on one thing and two vertices on the thing you want to hold to it. Then press f to connect the vertices into a polygon.

Mada

@barbult - interesting, I was able to replicate your results - it does look like the surface add-on stops working after autofitting - I'll have to run this past support and see what they say. Thanks! :)

Mada

The only explanation I can come up with right now is because the add-on is autofitted to the shirt, and when you autofit the shirt to a new figure the position of the vertexes changes in the shirt but not the add-on. Running autofit on the add-on to the shirt doesn't fix it, even if I autofit it to GenesisF first and then the shirt - so it might be a case of having to redo add-ons when you fit to a new figure. I'll let you know if support has a better solution :)

maikdecker

barbult said:

@Mada, I'm back to pester you again! I have a question about dForce House Brownie Outfit for Genesis 8 Male(s). The pants, socks, and shoes autofit to G8F fine, but when double clicked the shirt thumbnail with G8F selected, it loaded in the scene parented to G8F, but the Autofit dialog didn't come up. It is not "Fit to" G8F either. Do you know why that would happen?

QMada also see my post from a while ago...

maikdecker said:

uhm... what's going wrong here?

Left figure: G8M with full House Brownie Outfit, simulated with timeline into the CDIOllie BowA pose - seems to work as intended

Right figure: G8M with each part of the Brownie Outfit put on one by one... simulated into the CDIOllie BowA pose... everything works, except for the shirt...

Edit: seems that fitting the shirt to G8M is what leads to it... If I do that, the shirt doesn't even follow basic pose changes. Unless there is more than one G8M in the scene and the shirt is loaded with none of them selected, making the "which figure should it be fit to" window pop up. Then fitting it to either G8M makes it work...
But it works, when the shirt is loaded into the scene without G8M selected and then parenting it to G8M or even when not parenting it to G8M. Even the unparented shirt seems to follow the figure
And it works, when using G3M instead of G8M and fitting it to G3M

 

barbult

That's very interesting. I don't think I owned House Brownie yet when you posted that, so it didn't make an impression on me at the time. Something's wrong with that shirt, it seems.

Mada

Looks like the solo shirt is not loading automatically fitted to the male - the easy fix is to right click on the shirt in the scene tab and select "fit House Brownie Shirt" and then select Genesis 8 Male. Or load the full set and delete everything but the shirt, either way works fine. The surface add-on not transferring with the shirt when fitted to another figure is something else entirely.

Diomede

Thank you for this fantastic thread.  There is so much useful information.

I did yet another cape example in another thread.  I converted it to conforming so that full body morphs could be applied, and I divided it into multiple shading domains so that a medallion or other item could be used as an anchor at the front of the neck.  Pretty simple compared to the amazing tests here, but I thought some folks might be interested.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3777401/#Comment_3777401

RGcincy

Diomede said:

Thank you for this fantastic thread.  There is so much useful information.

I did yet another cape example in another thread.  I converted it to conforming so that full body morphs could be applied, and I divided it into multiple shading domains so that a medallion or other item could be used as an anchor at the front of the neck.  Pretty simple compared to the amazing tests here, but I thought some folks might be interested.

Thanks for posting the link to your thread! Although your tutorials use Hexagon, I can easily see how to apply your instructions to Silo (which I use). 

RGcincy

barbult said:

I used Blender. Select two vertices on one thing and two vertices on the thing you want to hold to it. Then press f to connect the vertices into a polygon.

I'll have to give that a try. Thanks for the info.

nicstt

DanaTA said:

nicstt said:

sapat said:

barbult said:

It works!

 

Awww, how sweet!  And he's smiling about it. 

May I ask what your HDR is?  I need something with a woodsy look.

Errr no; carnivors don't smile.

We smile!

Dana

We're not carnivores, but omnivores.

nicstt

Odaa said:

nicstt said:

sapat said:

barbult said:

It works!

 

Awww, how sweet!  And he's smiling about it. 

May I ask what your HDR is?  I need something with a woodsy look.

Errr no; carnivors don't smile.

Actually some breeds of dogs do appear to make smile-like expressions in "happy"/"feelgood" situations. It's believed to be a side effect of them imprinting on us, and the long generations of breeding to make that imprinting happen.

You are correct that teeth-baring is a hostile sign in large chunks of the animal kingdom (calling it a carnivore thing is not accurate. Check out #3 on this list: http://ihearthorses.com/reasons-why-horses-show-their-teeth/ )

Although it can be taken as meaning carnivores, yes large numbers of animals bare their teeth; indeed horses bite just fine, as I found out during my horse-riding days. Whilst dogs generally love us, sadly, they revert to type on occasions: and the most vulnerable are the ones that pay for our laxity - or presumption that they are tame.