dForce, dWeight and dWardrobe. Chronicles of...

barbult

L'Adair said:

My best guess would be RGcincy's thread, but I don't know for sure.

Rich sent her to you! 

RGcincy

It's an infinite loop!!

WillowRaven

L'Adair said:

My best guess would be RGcincy's thread, but I don't know for sure.

I don't have any of the cowboy shirts from that era, so I can't play with it myself. However, if you use the dForce Weight Node, you can decrease the influence around areas that shouldn't be distorting. See my post above on dForcing the jeans Baldric is wearing. (Also, if the buttons have a separate material zone, you can change the Dynamic Strength in the Surfaces > Editor for that zone.

Collars continue to be problematic. When you decrease the influence, they don't simulate as much, (or at all, if you remove the influence completely,) but that causes it's own set of visual issues. It becomes a matter of trial and error, finding the right amount of influence to reach a result you can live with.

I hate pockets. If they're not welded, they fall off unless you fiddle with the influence, but if you lower the influence so the scrap of mesh doesn't fall off, it also lowers the influence of the mesh underneath, preventing that section of the object from draping naturally. But pockets are a pain with conforming clothing, too, stretching unnaturally with bends. (Notice the pockets on the woman's jeans in this image. That's the result of conforming clothes and an extreme bend.)

Thanks, L'Adair. I haven't learned about Weight Nodes, yet, at some point, I'll get there :)

WillowRaven

L'Adair said:

Life has been busy, in real life and in Daz Studio, but I now have another dforce image to share:

Baldric WIP

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I used dForce on both the jeans and the tank top. The jeans and shoes are from Street Style Outfit G8M and the tank is from Hellfire Outfit G8M.

I started out with the jeans—I specifically liked the rips in the legs—but the way they bent in this pose was truly awful. They are loose fitting jeans that fit away from the leg, but with such extreme bends as this kneeling pose, standing away from the legs was unnatural, and the fabric of the left leg was intersecting the torso. After applying the dForce Dynamic Surface modifier, I added a dForce Weight Node, and lowered the influence around the waist to keep the belt and belt loops in place. The shoes were an issue, too. The tongue can be moved closer to the leg, as I have it here, but interferes with the bottom of the jeans. I had to tweak the weight node map, lowering the influence a bit on the lower legs to keep some of those great folds. And I lowered the influence across the front pelvic area, too.

Here are some Viewport draws of the weight map.

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As usual, I ran the simulation over the Timeline, letting the tongue of the shoes close at Frame 30, where the pose is complete. Happy with the results, I froze the simulation and went looking for a shirt. I should mention, I had already added the tattoe to his arm, so I needed a sleeveless top. I tried several, and ulitmately decided on the Hellfire top because it's not long, and therefore easier to get under the waist of the jeans. In front, at least. I didn't want to deal with poke-through of the belt and belt loops. (A large scene like the one I'm working on takes more than enough time as it is. No need to stretch it out even more over some belt loops, imo.)

The Helfire shirt posed a different sort of problem, though. Conforming to Baldric's shape was… interesting. But not very realistic. That sent me back to dForce.

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I created a Weight Map node and attempted to keep some of the modeled in wrinkles by lowering the influence. It didn't work, at least to my satisfaction. So I reset the weight back to 100%. I didn't want to mess with the simulation on the jeans, but at Frame 0, the top was intesecting the dForced jeans. Getting creative, I set the scale on the x-axis of the jeans to 110% and 120% on the z-axis. At Frame 30, I set both back to 100%. Because of my experiments with influence on the wrinkles, it took several tries, but I finally got a drape I was satisfied with. I then froze the simulation for the shirt, as well.

One more thing. I didn't decide to use Jepe's Bodyhair Project 78 until after I'd simulated the clothes. The Bodyhair's strength is it uses transmaps, on a geometry shell. But the shell is offset from the skin some what, and it was intersecting both the jeans and the top in places. Rather than simulate both items again, I set the Collision Item to Bodyhair shell in the Mesh Smoothing parameters. It worked perfectly with the jeans, but the chest hair uses some displacement, and it was poking through the shirt.

I decided to try something I read in the fourms, that didn't make sense to me at the time. I'm now a lot more comfortable with weight maps and how the nodes work, thanks to dForce. So I added a Push Modifier to the top and created a Push Modifier Weight Node. I filled the weigth node with 0% weight, then selected two rows of polys along the edges of the neck and armholes. And then I inverted the selection. With the Draw Mode in Nvidia Iray, I filled the weight now with 5% weight. From there I added 1% and filled again, repeating that until none of the hair poked through. And because I isolated the edges first, it added a nice bit of thickness, too..

Here's an up-close detail of the map, showing the edges.

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As you can see by the light blue color, it didn't take much. I ended up using 8% weight, on the default Offset of 1.  (The same effect could have been accomplished by setting the edges to 0% while leaving the rest of the shirt infuence at 100% and then lowering the Offset.)

You should add this to my 'does it dforce' thread :)

WillowRaven

How do I tell an upper-garment to react to an under-garment? Like a vest & jacket over a shirt & tie? And how do I freeze something once I get it in place?

L'Adair

RGcincy said:

It's an infinite loop!!

LOL

WillowRaven said:

How do I tell an upper-garment to react to an under-garment? Like a vest & jacket over a shirt & tie? And how do I freeze something once I get it in place?

The easy answer first: Once you're happy with a simulation, select the object and open the Parameters tab. In the left column, select Simulation and the options for Simulations will be isolated. You'll see the option to Freeze Simulation in the right column. Just click on the toggle to turn that option On.

Be aware, that clicking the "Clear" button will remove the simulation from item(s) with Freeze Simulation On, but because the option is enabled, the item(s) won't drape again. You'll have to set that option to Off to drape again. there is a Clear dForce Simulation from Selected Item(s) option. You'll find it with the other dForce menu items. Those can be found in several places, but I usually click on the Scene menu, and select Edit > Geometry > Clear dForce Simulation from Selected Item(s).

The not so easy answer:

• With simple things, you can sometimes get away with setting Collision Offset at different values for the items; An offset of .20 for the shirt and .30 for the vest, for example.
• Sometimes it works best if you've applied the Smoothing modifier and set the Collision item for the upper item to the lower item, instead of the figure.
• Sometimes it works best to drape each item separately, starting with the lowest item first, freezing the items as you go.
• Sometimes it only works if you create a morph of the drape underneath, use the Timeline, and dial the morph from 0 to 100% during the morph.
• And sometimes, the best thing you can do is find a different outfit.

I am referring to using dForce on clothing that was created before we had dForce,

WillowRaven

Thanks, L'Adair :) I don't suppose you o youtube tutorials? If so, I'm subscribing!

L'Adair

WillowRaven said:

Thanks, L'Adair :) I don't suppose you o youtube tutorials? If so, I'm subscribing!

I'm very flattered, @WillowRaven. However, I haven't done anything with video in a long time, and nothing having to do with 3d or Daz Studio. (I'm such a perfectionist, I don't think I'd have any time left to actually play in DS, if I started doing videos.)

trhancock

Hi L'Adair, thank you so much for this resource!

I'm now in my 2nd week of a Digital Art Live 8-week webinar/coaching group on dForce, led by Rich Schafermeyer.

I am sure you won't mind that as soon as I discovered your dForce topic - purely because of the link in your post footnotes in the Forums! - I have added a reference to this topic in the dForce group Resources section of the new DAL "STUDIO" Facebook-like collaborative platform. And enthused about the link lists in the first 2 posts.

Our subject for this week is weight mapping and dForce - which is why it was just so appropriate to see your topic at the present time!

The topic title is just so funny! Especially for a CS Lewis and Narnia fan such as myself. And even a mention of Yoda thrown in!

Thank you again L'Adair,

Trevor

L'Adair

As of today, all my images and gallery links in this thread have been updated so that the images are visible and the links go to the new Galleries. Going forward, I will not rely on the Galleries to host images for this thread, so I will be attaching them. It isn't as clean a look, but it should save a lot of grief in the long run.

Thank you to all who have continued to use this thread as a resource. I plan on adding new content to it in the not-too-distant future.

barbult

For a clean look, you can upload the images to another thread and add your links here, just as if you linked to the file uploaded to this thread. There is even a thread that exists for uploading those images. I'm on my phone and don't have a link to it handy. though.

chris-2599934

barbult said:

For a clean look, you can upload the images to another thread and add your links here, just as if you linked to the file uploaded to this thread. There is even a thread that exists for uploading those images. I'm on my phone and don't have a link to it handy. though.

The thread you're looking for it this one: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59113/an-ot-thread-for-images . Though I wouldn't bet against Daz one day "improving" the forum software and breaking all those links too...