My workflow for dForce

mephoria

Like many folks, I was incredibly excited for the arrival of dForce in DAZ studio. I’m particularly interested in getting dresses and tops to work properly on ladies with “non-standard” figures (i.e. voluptuous, small-breasted, large-breasted, etc.). However, because of the nature of various shaping morphs, which can distort the geometry before the simulation even starts, I was only partially successful. Thus, I went back to first principles to figure out the best way to get full benefit from the simulation. Your mileage may vary, but this is what works for me.

1. Create a figure appropriate to the garment(s) you will be fitting. Typically this will be a generic Genesis figure with no morphs or posing. However, special cases will require a bit of creativity: if you are putting a men’s shirt on a female, max the “breasts gone” or “androgynous” morph.

2. Add the garment(s) to be simulated into the scene. Do not fit, parent, or smooth them to the figure. Leave them just sitting in the same space that your figure occupies.

3. Add in any other auto-fitted garments or props which might interact with your simulated garments.

4. If necessary, adjust the sizes of the garments to be appropriate to the final figure. Busty figures such as Olympia will want to wear a size “large” so that there’s enough cloth to fit without stretching out of shape, whereas a “voluptuous” mod will want an extra large. (Sizing proportions: 90%=small, 100=medium, 110=large, and 120 is XL.) Scale up the figures by the same amount so that initial fit is right. Note: You might need to “Show Hidden Properties” in the Parameters tab in order to find the scale control for garments.

5. Make sure there are no collisions between the figure and the garment(s). In order to keep optimal geometry, always morph the figure, not the garment(s). It’s okay to use “deformation” morphs like “X-Away” -- realistic figure shape isn’t vital at this point.

6. In the “Animation” tab, create a two second animation (61 frames).

7. At the 1 second mark (frame 30), create a key frame.

8. Apply the actual character shape that you want at frame 30: pre-made characters, morphs, etc. This will likely leave your garments looking horrible, but that’s fine.

9. Zero out all of the sizing/collision adjustments you made. (Let them remain at frame 0, but not at frame 30 and later.)

10. Create a key frame at the 1.5 second mark (frame 45) and apply the pose that you want. (You could put this at frame 30, but putting it later allows the shape to be established before you have to deal with potential collisions between limbs and body in extreme poses.)

11. Add dynamic surface simulation to the garments. Set the parameters however you please. (Hint: if the garment has potentially bad geometry [including seams, folds, etc.] set “Bend Stiffness” to 0.2 instead of 0.5. Lowering “Shear Stiffness” and “Buckling Stiffness” can also help.)

12. In the “Simulate” tab, set “Frames to Simulate” to “Animated (Use Timeline Play Range)”.

13. Run the simulation. If it blows up, try the adjustments described in step 11 and retry.

14. Optionally, add/enable a smoothing modifier. You can, if you like set it to collide against your figure. (It’s important that you do this now rather than before the simulation, because dForce will ignore the modifier in simulation, but display the smoothed version -- thus hiding any potential collision issues.)

15. Add the rest of your scene.

16. Render from frame 60 so that you get the full simulation effects, including morphs, posing, and “relaxation” time.

In the attached images I used “stock” Olympia 6 with a fairly extreme pose. The “auto” version uses the “Tre shirt” designed for Genesis 1 (Male), and uses auto-fit and pose following. I added smoothing and collision modifiers and hand-tweaked them to deal with collisions triggered by the extreme pose. In my opinion, the results still aren’t very good, with obvious stretching and warping and unnatural shaping around the breasts.

The “sim” version followed the procedures described above. I scaled to a size “large” (110%) and used the “androgynous” morph and various x-away morphs to avoid collisions with the masculine garb. All surface simulation settings were kept at default, but the global simulation settings were tweaked to use 10 subframes. (It worked ok with the default of 8, but there were two gratuitous collisions.) There are some very minor collisions under the right armpit, but these are inevitable because the pose is self-intersecting. A smoothing modifier has no effect on these collisions, but made the overall appearance a touch better, so I kept it. To my amateur eye, this render is quite plausibly realistic, and the Genesis 1 male garment looks like it was designed to work with Olympia 6. I’m very happy with the result.

 

Archast

Really nice workflow, I did a lot of experimentation with dForce as well and I kind of got the same workflow and results, but if I might add, instead of doing a 61 frames animation you could set up inicialization time and stabilization time, just to be quicker, and regarding the autoFit I had a voluptous Arianne that I had to fit today and after playing a lot with the size and scaling I just ended letting daz autofit and I did corrections on the surfaces themselves to achieve a nice result overall with a little less work.

What you've gathered already is pretty amzing, kudos for this write up, it will help a lot of people! :D

ggs_26de60e5b2

Mephoria.

I really had such high hopes and excitment for this dForce. It would have made the use of so many more clothes, and the finished render could have looked so good. But, although I am average as far as using Daz Studio, and I do appreciate the amount of work you have put in to working this thing out, and going to the trouble of listing it in order for us, it has just made it abundently clear, that dForce at this time, is far too complicated and temperamental for the likes of myself, and maybe many others.

I am tired of crashing back to Desktop, or just grinding to a halt. However, I am just thankful that 4.10 seems to work okay.

I'm afraid I am one of those people who would, with just a few adjustments, like to just press a button and it happens.

I guess, and I hope, it will get better and easier in time, although I'm sure Daz will have very little to do with that. I'll have another look in six months and see if it has got better.

Gray

Chohole

If you buy the dForce compatioble products from the store you will indeed be able to push a button and get  results,

ggs_26de60e5b2

Well I'll give it one more try

mephoria

Chohole said:

If you buy the dForce compatioble products from the store you will indeed be able to push a button and get  results,

I would also say that it is actually much easier to design a versatile garment for dForce than it is to design a garment with appropriate adjustment morphs. Hopefully, there will be a reasonable exchange in free dForce-friendly garments. My first such garment (a t-shirt) isn't quite ready for prime-time, but I could still probably share it with folks who are interested, and I hope to have it fully polished sometime soon.

mephoria

<< Screwed up post deleted. As soon as I can figure out how to *actually* delete the post, I'll do so. >>

mephoria

I'm continuing to refine both my workflow and the home-made t-shirt that I'm using to test things. This is a good example of a garment that would fail badly with auto-fit, and a pose that pushes beyond what could be done with traditional DAZ workflow. Note that this same t-shirt will simulate and render without distortion on Michael 6 or Olympia 6 or, presumably, any other exotic variation.

Midnight_stories

I will say it a bit a bit vague on the dForce weight node and how to save that node for later, need more info on layering clothes. It's hard going at the moment but I'm sure there will be more tutorials coming !