Tutorial on how to make clothing with moving parts?

JQP

I have an accessory in my library, a necklace with a pendant. The necklace is a conforming figure, but the pendant is a prop attached via a "follow node." I want to convert the whole thing into a single conforming figure while retaining the ability to pose (swing) the pendant around the pivot point at the clasp that attaches to the necklace. As this sounds a bit different to standard clothing, I figure I might have a hard time finding a tutorial on how to do this. I figure there are two somewhat unique challenges here: 1) combining the figure and prop geometry into a single figure and 2) rigging the resulting figure. If anyone has a tutorial or guide in the ballpark, I'd love to see it. If you want to give me a quick bullet-list of what I need to do, that would be great, too (I've never created any figures or rigged much of anything, but I'm pretty familiar with DS, and I won't be too intimidated by high-level instructions.

 

(P.S., I assume I might need to use something like Blender to import two separate objs and combine them - that's no problem, but I don't know my way around Blender yet)

Richard Haseltine

You could load the necklace into a scene on its own, export as OBJ with both parts selected and the option to export selected nodes only, and reimport (making suer you use the same prset, probably the Daz Studio one, for both directions). Then use the Transfer Utility (Edit>Figure>Transfer Utility) with the original necklace as the Source and the OBJ as the Target to get the basic rigging. One you have that, select the bone that inclused the pendant and use the Joint Editor tool's right-click menu to add a bone for the pendant, and to line the centre point up with the pivot. Finally select the nwe bone and use the Node Weightmap Brush tool to select the pendant (with luck a right-click option will be able to do it via the Surface names, if not you may need to use the Geometry Editor to do the selection first) and then right-click>Weight Editing>File Selected and assign a weight of 100%.

JQP

Thank you very much for the instructions!

(I didn't see an option to export selected nodes only in the Daz preset, so I just continued following along with your guide)

I followed the guide and everything seemed to go fine, but after I finished, the newly created "pendant" bone doesn't affect the geometry assigned to it when I rotate the node in the parameters tab. The bone type I selected when creating the new bone was "child," should I have created a controller bone, or some other type? There were several.

felis

After you have created the child bone you need to allocate weight to it. Select the pendant with the geometry editor, and then go to weight paint, and with the pendant bone selected, in Tool setting check *General Weights* and in the viewport rightclick > Weight Editing > Fill Selected > 100%

JQP

The only setting i see in the node weight map brush tool for "general weights" is Skinning: Weight Mapping Mode. Is that the one?

JQP

In any case, I've tried it all over again, and the geometry doesn't seem to be assigning to be bone. I'm obviously missing something, but I can't figure out what, because I'm able to follow all the steps, as it all seems pretty straightforward.

felis

JQP said:

The only setting i see in the node weight map brush tool for "general weights" is Skinning: Weight Mapping Mode. Is that the one?

You might have it as an unused map in the middle of Tool Settings, and then you need to Add map first. 

Richard Haseltine

felis said:

JQP said:

The only setting i see in the node weight map brush tool for "general weights" is Skinning: Weight Mapping Mode. Is that the one?

You might have it as an unused map in the middle of Tool Settings, and then you need to Add map first. 

Thanks, I missed that step - yes, select the General Weights map (assuming it's a Genesis 3+ item).

crosswind

For understanding basic rigging / weight mapping- https://youtu.be/rFfAZjuDBQE

JQP

Thanks Richard, felis, for your guidance. Thanks crosswind for the tutorial - I think something comprehensive is what I need to get up to speed on this.

(assuming it's a Genesis 3+ item).

It's a genesis 3 item autofitted to genesis 2.

Leana

Genesis 2 figures use TriAx weight mapping so it might be a bit different.