Marvelous Designer
JoeMamma2000
Posts: 2,615
It's been a while since I played with MD, and that was back when it was a free trial or something. It's IMO one of the nicest, best designed and most innovative software I've seen in a very long time.
I just checked their website, and apparently they've now gone bigtime. They're charging a perpetual $60 per month for a license, or $360 per year, or a one-time forever license for $550. Yikes. Not sure I can justify that kind of money for such a niche software.
I'm curious, have many people dove in and purchased it, and if so, has it improved a lot over the last few years? Thanks.
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I know of people, who have bought the license. They are seriously into clothing design, and a few design clothes for 3d applications.
They are for the most part doing their thing all the time to make money.
The software definitely got better over the years. The big freak out was that quads were promised in v2 but not delivered until v4 and the Daz Studio plugin never materialized. I bought v2 and then a year of v3 at 50% off but I can't justify continuing at full price.
I have MD2 and that works fine, but I did not upgrade when they moved to subscription as I don't use it frequently enough to justify it, and the new features in version 3 did not warrant it (for me anyway). They have now introduced quads in version 4, but I have seen a test of that, and while it is technically quads, the meshes are nowhere near as clean as you would think they should be.
In my view, they are very clever technically but their marketing leaves a lot to be desired, and the decision to go for subscriptions was a big turn-off.
I joined the last beta they ran just when it was about to end. I Recently wanted to start the 15 day trial period but for some reason I wasn´t able to. I only spent a short period of time exploring MD and I totally loved it!
It´s definitely on my software wishlist but I´d still like to get my hands on the trial to see what it´s all about.
There were some features I was missing/did not find in the beta though, such as:
- being able to subdivide the mesh
- fabric presets (denim, leather, cotton....)
- and some kind of a good comprehensible tutorial about how to set up my own avatar (in my case G2F) I remember trying to do this but it didn´t go very well and I did not find any good tutorials and then the beta ended.
So if anyone has MD4 and could answer any of these, I´d be very grateful! : )
I don't have MD4, because it is not yet ready for animation.
MD3 works well with Fenric' s MDD plugin.
If you make still image, your avatar is a simple object of your character, I don't know if that works with the triax of Genesis and version 2 of the plugin does not seem to work correctly for the moment.
Older generations of characters works very well, my first test here: http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?topic=209.msg1232#msg1232
And for still images : http://carraracafe.com/articles/carrara-marvelous-designer-walkthrough/
I have MD2 rather than a more recent version, but I think these will still be valid:
- I think the variable you need is point distance (or mesh distance or something like that). The default is 20 and this is useful for setting up the clothing, you can then reduce it to any value, so a value of 10 is similar to subdividing the mesh density once, 5=twice etc. It does not actually subdivide but reallocates points around the mesh based on this average point distance.
- There are fabric presets in the materials list.
- If you just want to model against a default pose, you can export any figure as an OBJ file and import that as the avatar (but you won't be able to change pose n MD). You can also use any other object - eg, a bed to fit bedclothes, etc.
A new experiment with MD to Carrara, it's very easy to build the clothing ourself and fit it to an animated character.
http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?topic=209.msg1283#msg1283
Looks good, Dudu. Because I've heard MD uses the subscription method, I have stuck to using Poser's cloth room as a plugin for Carrara but I see some great experiments like yours for MD. Might be worth taking another look, although I have high hopes for Stringtheory's cloth approach within Carrara.
Great test and the kind of animated cloth that you couldn't get any other way than using a dynamic solution. Wonderfully put together!
Thank you,
I'm admiring in front of the users who want to arrive there directly in Carrara, I devoted to it many many hours without arriving at the excellent result which you showed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J330vCj1io
But MD is so easy…:)
Dio, I don't know if it's possible to find a older version anymore, MD2 is fine.
Even when I was having some success with dynamic cloth directly in Carrara, it was still somewhat flakey. I am watching the developments of using soft body attach with great interest, but yes, if you have MD2, it provides a much more stable and workable solution. I have used MD in a number of projects. My current animation project uses MD clothes for a couple of characters, but I have turned them into conforming clothes rather than doing dynamic simulations.
That looks nice.
Any chance it goes 50% off once or twice a year?
OPEN BETA TEST !
YES PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was unable to start my MD4 15 day trial, this sounds like an amazing opportunity to try out the software! : ))
Thanks for the notification. Great news.
Dont know about you guys but I am having a problem running the beta. It says I have expired license.
I got that email,
I tried the demo last year but was too busy on other stuff so it expired so will be interesting if this works.
nah says I have no products